Aphorisms Galore!

Art and Literature

44 aphorisms  ·  14 comments

Aphorisms in This Category

tiny.ag/fyjdrmtu  ·  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/xrmys3sk  ·  submitted 1997

Learning music by reading about it is like making love by mail.

Luciano Pavarotti, in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/lrnyb5qs  ·  submitted 1997

Art is the lie that makes us realize the truth.

Pablo Picasso, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/1kb8kpsn  ·  submitted 1997

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist after one grows up.

Pablo Picasso, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/ectg9tju  ·  submitted 1997

I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.

Elvis Presley, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/p6bwfqfr  ·  submitted 1997

Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

P. J. O'Rourke, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/o5xbszuz  ·  submitted 1997

There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

Flannery O'Connor, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/n6fwvz07  ·  submitted 1997

Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.

Flannery O'Connor, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/8dgit6e3  ·  submitted 1997

Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.

Joseph Conrad, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/i0nu42ok  ·  submitted 1997

The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense.

Tom Clancy, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/1ucvbvaf  ·  submitted 1997

No sane man will dance.

Cicero, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/nsr67v4t  ·  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/2drhezti  ·  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/bkfg47jr  ·  submitted 1997

I didn't like the play. But I saw it under unfavorable circumstances -- the curtains were up.

Groucho Marx, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/airwcz94  ·  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/vgytosrx  ·  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/inomue9p  ·  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

tiny.ag/wqaxitgv  ·  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/xozwtgoz  ·  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