Aphorisms Galore!

Art and Literature

44 aphorisms  ·  14 comments

Aphorisms in This Category

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/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.

Frank Zappa, in Art and Literature

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/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/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.

E. W. Howe, in Art and Literature and Love and Hate

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

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

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.

Gilbert K. Chesterton, 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/1ucvbvaf  ·   Fair (911 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

No sane man will dance.

Cicero, in Art and Literature

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.

Mark Twain, in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance

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.

Mark Twain, in Art and Literature

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.

Mark Twain, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/nqpwl3vp  ·   Fair (462 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.

Mark Twain, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/hcrgr6oa  ·   Fair (349 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.

Voltaire, in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance