My play was a complete success. The audience was a failure.

This wry epigram is characteristic of Ashleigh Brilliant’s “Pot-Shots,” the short, aphoristic one-liners he wrote and circulated widely on postcards and in collections from the 1970s onward. Brilliant’s work often adopts the voice of a self-assured speaker whose confidence collapses under a final twist, exposing vanity, self-deception, or social friction. The line plays on the language of theatrical reviews—where a “success” is measured by audience response—by shifting blame from the work to the spectators. It reflects the modern comic posture of the aggrieved artist who insists on personal triumph even when public reception is poor.

The aphorism turns the usual metric of success inside out. A “complete success” normally implies an approving audience; Brilliant’s second sentence comically reassigns failure to the spectators, suggesting the work is inherently excellent and only misunderstood by an inferior public. The humor exposes a common defensive posture among creators and tastemakers: when reception is poor, it is easier to indict the audience’s intelligence, taste, or readiness than to reconsider the work. At the same time, the line gestures toward the real tension between artistic ambition and popular comprehension—raising the question of whether “success” should be defined by intrinsic standards or by the response of those for whom the work is made.