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S.A. Bent, comp. Familiar Short Sayings of Great Men. 1887.

Apelles

  • [A celebrated Greek painter, born probably in Ionia; the contemporary and friend of Alexander the Great, who allowed only him to paint his portrait. The time and place of his death are unknown.]
  • Ne sutor supra [not ultra] crepidam.

  • In German, Schuster, bleib’ bei deinem Leisten.
  • Apelles was in the habit of exhibiting his pictures to the passers-by, while he heard their comments without being seen. One day a shoemaker criticised the shoes in a certain picture, and found next day that they had been repainted. Proud of his success as a critic, he began to find fault with the thigh of the figure; when Apelles cried out from behind the canvas, “Shoemaker, stick to your last.”—PLINY, H. N. 35. Told by Lucian of Phidias.
  • The success of Apelles was due to his constant practice, so that he allowed no day to pass without drawing at least a line, which Pliny formulated into a rule, “No day without its line” (Nulla dies sine linea).—Ibid.