Art and Literature
44 aphorisms · 14 comments
Aphorisms in This Category
21–40 (44)
tiny.ag/1zzynlyn · ★★☆☆ Fair (439 ratings) · submitted 1997
These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves.
tiny.ag/yuezt1iy · ★★☆☆ Fair (377 ratings) · submitted 1997
A painting in a museum probably hears more foolish remarks than anything else in the world.
tiny.ag/bmdpgrs0 · ★★☆☆ Fair (1377 ratings) · submitted 1997
Let's have some new clichés.
tiny.ag/xudcfsey · ★★☆☆ Fair (845 ratings) · submitted 1997
In a painting I want to say something comforting.
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.
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.
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
I live for books.
Thomas Jefferson, in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance
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.
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.
tiny.ag/c4btvpfg · ★★☆☆ Fair (841 ratings) · submitted 1997
Some editors are failed writers, but then, so are most writers.
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.
tiny.ag/8dgit6e3 · ★★☆☆ Fair (1198 ratings) · submitted 1997
Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.
tiny.ag/6kpvlbo7 · ★★☆☆ Fair (880 ratings) · submitted 1999
Picasso is a communist. Neither am I.
tiny.ag/molfssqk · ★★☆☆ Fair (820 ratings) · submitted 1997
Art is anything you can get away with.
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.
tiny.ag/i0nu42ok · ★★☆☆ Fair (1224 ratings) · submitted 1997
The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense.
21–40 (44)