Compassion has no place in the natural order of the world which operates on the basis of necessity. Compassion opposes this order and is therefore best thought of as being in some way supernatural. - John Berger
To be desired is perhaps the closest anybody in this life can reach to feeling immortal. - John Berger
Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion. - John Berger
The media network has its idols, but its principal idol is its own style which generates an aura of winning and leaves the rest in darkness. It recognizes neither pity nor pitilessness. - John Berger
A drawing of a tree shows not a tree but a tree being looked at - John Berger
When we suffer anguish we return to early childhood because that is the period in which we first learnt to suffer the experience of total loss. It was more than that. It was the period in which we suffered more total losses than in all the rest of our life put together. - John Berger
Is boredom anything less than the sense of one's faculties slowly dying? - John Berger
Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form. - John Berger
Today the discredit of words is very great. Most of the time the media transmit lies. In the face of an intolerable world, words appear to change very little. State power has become congenitally deaf, which is why /but the editorialists forget it /terrorists are reduced to bombs and hijacking. - John Berger
Publicity is the life of this culture - in so far as without publicity capitalism could not survive - and at the same time publicity is its dream. - John Berger
Happiness is not something to be pursued, it is something met, an encounter. Most encounters, however, have a sequel; this is their promise. The encounter with happiness has no sequel. All is there instantly. Happiness is what pierces grief. - John Berger
Your lips, beloved, are like a honeycomb: honey and milk are under the tongue. And the smell of your clothes is like the smell of my home. - John Berger
The envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power. - John Berger
Ours is the century of enforced travel of disappearances. The century of people helplessly seeing others, who were close to them, disappear over the horizon. - John Berger