Quotes About Originality

You mean who do I like? Oh, Mary Ellen Mark. Diane Arbus." "Arbus?" He scratched his head. "Wasn't it she who said, 'Nothing is ever the same as they said it was. It's what I've never seen before that I recognize'?

life was not easy. And what an earth-shatteringly original observation that was.

there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace.

The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know.

Complexity of thought is no measure of originality.

Let me repeat: the principle mark of genius is not perfection, but originality, the opening of new frontiers; once this is done, the conquered territory becomes common property.

The conditions for original thinking are when two or more streams of research begin to offer evidence that they may converge and so in some manner be combined. It is the combination which can generate new directions of research, and through these it may be found that basic units and activities may have properties not before suspected which open up a lot of new questions for experimental study.

Habit and originality, then, point in opposite directions in the two-way traffic between conscious and unconscious processes. The condensation of learning into habit, and the automatisation of skills constitute the downward stream; while the upward traffic consists in the minor vitalising pulses from the underground, and the rare major surges of creation.

Every creative act involves... a new innocence of perception, liberated from the cataract of accepted belief.

What a woman! They broke the mould when they made her.

there are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion; and what remains but to take it ready-made from others, instead of forming opinions for himself?

The intellectual attainments of a man who thinks for himself resemble a fine painting, where the light and shade are correct, the tone sustained, the colour perfectly harmonised; it is true to life. On the other hand, the intellectual attainments of the mere man of learning are like a large palette, full of all sorts of colours, which at most are systematically arranged, but devoid of harmony, connection and meaning.

A man who has not enough originality to think out a new title for his book will be much less capable of giving it new contents.

Genius is among other minds what the carbuncle is among gemstones; it radiates its own light while the others only reflect what they receive.

Was die Herde am meisten hasst, ist derjenige, der anders denkt; es ist nicht so sehr die Meinung selbst, sondern die Kühnheit, selbst denken zu wollen.

On account of its originality, excellence in every field strikes us as so new and so strange, that to recognize it at first glance will require not only understanding, but also education in the same discipline. As a rule, excellence achieves late recognition, all the later as the discipline is loftier, and those who truly enlighten humankind share the fate of the fixed stars, the light from which requires many years before it descends to the horizon.

a ingenuidade se mantém como a indumentária de honra do gênio, assim como a nudez é a da beleza.

If you want to earn the gratitude of your own age you must keep in step with it. But if you do that you will produce nothing great. If

Hence much reading deprives the mind of all elasticity, as a weight continually pressing upon it does a spring, and the most certain means of never having any original thoughts is to take a book in hand at once, at every spare moment. This practice is the reason why scholarship makes most men more unintelligent and stupid than they are by nature, and deprives their writings of all success; they are, as Pope says— 'For ever reading, never to be read'.

To imitate another man's style is like wearing a mask, which, be it never so fine, is not long in arousing disgust and abhorrence, because it is lifeless; so that even the ugliest living face is better.

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people." ? Arthur Schopenhauer

Apenas os pensamentos próprios são verdadeiros e têm vida, pois somente eles são entendidos de modo autêntico e completo. Pensamentos alheios, lidos, são como as sobras da refeição de outra pessoa, ou como as roupas deixadas por um hóspede na casa.

In order to have original, uncommon, and perhaps even immortal thoughts, it is enough to estrange oneself so fully from the world of things for a few moments, that the most ordinary objects and events appear quite new and unfamiliar. In this way their true nature is disclosed. What is here demanded cannot, perhaps, be said to be difficult; it is not in our power at all, but is just the province of genius.

The hollow, knobbled calf was pink, like proper calves should be. (When you re-create the image of man, why repeat God's mistakes?)