Art and Literature
44 aphorisms · 15 comments
Aphorisms in This Category
21–40 (44)
tiny.ag/qyerpit3 · 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/asaliq9g · submitted 1997
I live for books.
Thomas Jefferson, in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance
tiny.ag/is8fdtaa · submitted 1999
Love affairs have always greatly interested me, but I do not greatly care for them in books or moving pictures. In a love affair, I wish to be the hero, with no audience present.
tiny.ag/xozwtgoz · 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/molfssqk · submitted 1997
Art is anything you can get away with.
tiny.ag/6kpvlbo7 · submitted 1999
Picasso is a communist. Neither am I.
tiny.ag/qdh9azfp · 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.
tiny.ag/8dgit6e3 · submitted 1997
Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.
tiny.ag/2drhezti · submitted 1997
If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last.
Anton Chekhov, (advice to a novice playwright), in Art and Literature
tiny.ag/nsr67v4t · submitted 1997
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
tiny.ag/i0nu42ok · submitted 1997
The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense.
tiny.ag/1zzynlyn · submitted 1997
These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves.
tiny.ag/bmdpgrs0 · submitted 1997
Let's have some new clichés.
tiny.ag/xudcfsey · submitted 1997
In a painting I want to say something comforting.
tiny.ag/yuezt1iy · submitted 1997
A painting in a museum probably hears more foolish remarks than anything else in the world.
tiny.ag/g8ncpo30 · submitted 1997
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody has read.
tiny.ag/nqpwl3vp · submitted 1997
Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.
tiny.ag/zlwhlbfu · submitted 1997
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
tiny.ag/hp6j7tok · submitted 1997
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
21–40 (44)