Art and Literature
44 aphorisms · 14 comments
Aphorisms in This Category
1–20 (44)
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/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/35xxiwwa · ★★☆☆ Fair (327 ratings) · submitted 1997
Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.
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/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/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/is8fdtaa · ★★☆☆ Fair (1041 ratings) · 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/asaliq9g · ★★☆☆ Fair (3066 ratings) · submitted 1997
I live for books.
Thomas Jefferson, in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance
tiny.ag/i0nu42ok · ★★☆☆ Fair (1224 ratings) · submitted 1997
The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense.
tiny.ag/nsr67v4t · ★★☆☆ Fair (944 ratings) · 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/8dgit6e3 · ★★☆☆ Fair (1198 ratings) · submitted 1997
Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.
tiny.ag/1ucvbvaf · ★★☆☆ Fair (911 ratings) · submitted 1997
No sane man will dance.
tiny.ag/2drhezti · ★★☆☆ Fair (881 ratings) · 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/g8ncpo30 · ★★☆☆ Fair (517 ratings) · submitted 1997
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody has read.
tiny.ag/okkjfcye · ★★☆☆ Fair (342 ratings) · submitted 1997
Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.
tiny.ag/zlwhlbfu · ★★☆☆ Fair (474 ratings) · submitted 1997
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
tiny.ag/nqpwl3vp · ★★☆☆ Fair (462 ratings) · submitted 1997
Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.
tiny.ag/hcrgr6oa · ★★☆☆ Fair (349 ratings) · submitted 1997
Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.
1–20 (44)