Aphorisms Galore!

Art and Literature

44 aphorisms  ·  14 comments

Aphorisms in This Category

tiny.ag/1zzynlyn  ·   Fair (439 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves.

Gilbert Highet, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/yuezt1iy  ·   Fair (377 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

A painting in a museum probably hears more foolish remarks than anything else in the world.

Edmond Jules Goncourt, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/bmdpgrs0  ·   Fair (1377 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

Let's have some new clichés.

Samuel Goldwyn, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/xudcfsey  ·   Fair (845 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

In a painting I want to say something comforting.

Vincent van Gogh, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/bkfg47jr  ·   Fair (887 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

I didn't like the play. But I saw it under unfavorable circumstances -- the curtains were up.

Groucho Marx, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/airwcz94  ·   Fair (1078 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

A book is a mirror; if an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out.

G. C. Lichtenberg, in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/qyerpit3  ·   Fair (374 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

Samuel Johnson, in Art and Literature and Work and Recreation

tiny.ag/byzkqtr3  ·   Fair (651 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.

Samuel Johnson, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/xozwtgoz  ·   Fair (866 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

Dictionaries are like watches: the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

Samuel Johnson, in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/asaliq9g  ·   Fair (3066 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

tiny.ag/vgytosrx  ·   Fair (309 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it better not come at all.

John Keats, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/4dr826gh  ·   Fair (787 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier.

Gustave Flaubert, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/c4btvpfg  ·   Fair (841 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

Some editors are failed writers, but then, so are most writers.

T. S. Eliot, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/qdh9azfp  ·   Fair (881 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

It is not necessary for the public to know whether I am joking or whether I am serious, just as it is not necessary for me to know it myself.

Salvador Dalí, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/8dgit6e3  ·   Fair (1198 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.

Joseph Conrad, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/6kpvlbo7  ·   Fair (880 ratings)  ·  submitted 1999

Picasso is a communist. Neither am I.

Salvador Dalí, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/molfssqk  ·   Fair (820 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

Art is anything you can get away with.

Terence Trent D'Arby, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/dcgo3bsq  ·   Fair (1079 ratings)  ·  submitted 1999 by Erwin van Moll

Any time something is written against me, I not only share the sentiment but feel I could do the job far better myself. Perhaps I should advise would-be enemies to send me their grievances beforehand, with full assurance that they will receive my every aid and support. I have even secretly longed to write, under a pen name, a merciless tirade against myself.

Jorge Luis Borges, (autobiographical essay, 1970), in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/sybjkox1  ·   Fair (276 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

Art is a deliberate recreation of a new and special reality that grows from your response to life. It cannot be copied; it must be created.

Unknown, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/i0nu42ok  ·   Fair (1224 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense.

Tom Clancy, in Art and Literature