Aphorisms for Artists by Walter Darby Bannard

Aphorism #88

Art is reality. Words point to reality.

The nature of language demands that the actual substance of any discussion is absent from it. We are a talking species, so we think of language as specific when it is actually only symbolic. There is a world of experience obtained by holding a cold stone in your hand that is utterly beyond language.

Felix Mendelssohn wrote, “The thoughts which are expressed to me by music that I love are not too indefinite to be put into words, but on the contrary, too definite.”

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