Art and Literature
44 aphorisms · 14 comments
Aphorisms in This Category
1–20 (44)
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/asaliq9g · ★★☆☆ Fair (3066 ratings) · submitted 1997
I live for books.
Thomas Jefferson, in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance
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/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/molfssqk · ★★☆☆ Fair (820 ratings) · submitted 1997
Art is anything you can get away with.
tiny.ag/c4btvpfg · ★★☆☆ Fair (841 ratings) · submitted 1997
Some editors are failed writers, but then, so are most writers.
tiny.ag/1ucvbvaf · ★★☆☆ Fair (911 ratings) · submitted 1997
No sane man will dance.
tiny.ag/i0nu42ok · ★★☆☆ Fair (1224 ratings) · submitted 1997
The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense.
tiny.ag/8dgit6e3 · ★★☆☆ Fair (1198 ratings) · submitted 1997
Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.
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/6kpvlbo7 · ★★☆☆ Fair (880 ratings) · submitted 1999
Picasso is a communist. Neither am I.
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/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/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/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/wqaxitgv · ★★☆☆ Fair (1047 ratings) · submitted 1999 by Erwin van Moll
Mir Bahadur Ali is, as we have seen, incapable of evading the most vulgar of art's temptations: that of being a genius.
Jorge Luis Borges, "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim", in Art and Literature
tiny.ag/inomue9p · ★★☆☆ Fair (1073 ratings) · submitted 1999 by Erwin van Moll
There is no intellectual exercise which is not ultimately useless.
Jorge Luis Borges, "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote", in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance
1–20 (44)