Quotes About Originality

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest.

All profoundly original work looks ugly at first.

What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.

To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano.

Pictures must not be too picturesque.

Be brave enough to live creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You cannot get there by bus, only by hard work, risking and by not quite knowing what you are doing. What you will discover will be wonderful: yourself.

A new idea is rarely born like Venus attended by graces. More commonly it's modeled of baling wire and acne. More commonly it wheezes and tips over.

They lard their lean books with the fat of others' works.

Most plagiarists, like the drone, have neither taste to select, industry to acquire, nor skill to improve, but impudently pilfer the honey ready prepared, from the hive.

When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies, "Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life."

Modern poets mix too much water with their ink.

The human mind prefers to be spoonfed with the thoughts of others, but deprived of such nourishment it will, reluctantly, begin to think for itself- and such thinking, remember, is original thinking and may have valuable results.

Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more.

There's no right way of writing. There's only your way.

We had as lief not be, as not be ourselves.

Every human being is intended to have a character of his own; to be what no others are, and to do what no other can do.

We live counterfeit lives in order to resemble the idea we first had of ourselves.

What's a man's first duty? The answer is brief: To be himself.

The crow that mimics a cormorant gets drowned.

Be not imitator; freshly act thy part; Through this world be thou an independent ranger; Better is the faith that springeth from thy heart Than a better faith belonging to a stranger.

Posterity weaves no garlands for imitators.

A man like Verdi must write like Verdi.

All I would tell people is to hold on to what was individual about themselves, not to allow their ambition for success to cause them to try to imitate the success of others. You've got to find in on your own terms.

There is a difference between imitating a good man and counterfeiting him.