Art and Literature
44 aphorisms · 14 comments
Aphorisms in This Category
1–20 (44)
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/bkfg47jr · ★★☆☆ Fair (887 ratings) · submitted 1997
I didn't like the play. But I saw it under unfavorable circumstances -- the curtains were up.
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/1zzynlyn · ★★☆☆ Fair (439 ratings) · submitted 1997
These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves.
tiny.ag/c4btvpfg · ★★☆☆ Fair (841 ratings) · submitted 1997
Some editors are failed writers, but then, so are most writers.
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/xudcfsey · ★★☆☆ Fair (845 ratings) · submitted 1997
In a painting I want to say something comforting.
tiny.ag/bmdpgrs0 · ★★☆☆ Fair (1377 ratings) · submitted 1997
Let's have some new clichés.
tiny.ag/yuezt1iy · ★★☆☆ Fair (377 ratings) · submitted 1997
A painting in a museum probably hears more foolish remarks than anything else in the world.
tiny.ag/molfssqk · ★★☆☆ Fair (820 ratings) · submitted 1997
Art is anything you can get away with.
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/i0nu42ok · ★★☆☆ Fair (1224 ratings) · submitted 1997
The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense.
tiny.ag/1ucvbvaf · ★★☆☆ Fair (911 ratings) · submitted 1997
No sane man will dance.
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/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/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
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/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
1–20 (44)