Aphorisms Galore!

Art and Literature

44 aphorisms  ·  14 comments

Aphorisms in This Category

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/9dyyuj3l  ·   Fair (392 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.

Paul Valéry, 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/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/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.

George Bernard Shaw, in Art and Literature

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.

Elvis Presley, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/c4btvpfg  ·   Fair (841 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

Some editors are failed writers, but then, so are most writers.

T. S. Eliot, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/lrnyb5qs  ·   Fair (346 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

Art is the lie that makes us realize the truth.

Pablo Picasso, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/1kb8kpsn  ·   Fair (363 ratings)  ·  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/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.

Salvador Dalí, 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/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/1ucvbvaf  ·   Fair (911 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

No sane man will dance.

Cicero, in Art and Literature

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/molfssqk  ·   Fair (820 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

Art is anything you can get away with.

Terence Trent D'Arby, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/6kpvlbo7  ·   Fair (880 ratings)  ·  submitted 1999

Picasso is a communist. Neither am I.

Salvador Dalí, 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/xrmys3sk  ·   Fair (358 ratings)  ·  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/p6bwfqfr  ·   Fair (702 ratings)  ·  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