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/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/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/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/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/35xxiwwa · ★★☆☆ Fair (327 ratings) · submitted 1997
Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.
tiny.ag/hcrgr6oa · ★★☆☆ Fair (349 ratings) · submitted 1997
Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.
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/i7sepbck · ★★☆☆ Fair (927 ratings) · submitted 1998
The writer, making every effort to appear innocent and noble, takes his revenge with the pen; while the murderer, less hypocrtical, takes it with the sword.
Christopher Spranger, The Effort to Fall, in Art and Literature
tiny.ag/hp6j7tok · ★★☆☆ Fair (307 ratings) · submitted 1997
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
tiny.ag/nqpwl3vp · ★★☆☆ Fair (462 ratings) · submitted 1997
Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.
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/9dyyuj3l · ★★☆☆ Fair (392 ratings) · submitted 1997
An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.
tiny.ag/fnp4k5bh · ★★☆☆ Fair (397 ratings) · submitted 1997
There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem.
tiny.ag/fyjdrmtu · ★★☆☆ Fair (324 ratings) · submitted 1997
I choose a block of marble and chop off everything I don't need.
François-Auguste Rodin, (on how he created his statues), in Art and Literature
tiny.ag/ectg9tju · ★★☆☆ Fair (267 ratings) · submitted 1997
I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.
1–20 (44)