Quotes About Originality

I was the first to bring the Muse into my country.

It is much more important to be oneself than anything else. Do not dream of influencing other people...Think of things in themselves.

I find myself saying briefly and prosaically that it is much more important to be oneself than anything else. Do not dream of influencing other people, I would say, if I knew how to make it sound exalted. Think of things in themselves.

Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul.

When I rummage in my own mind I find no noble sentiments about being companions and equals and influencing the world to higher ends. I find myself saying briefly and prosaically that it is much more important to be oneself than anything else. Do not dream of influencing other people, I would say, if I knew how to make it sound exalted. Think of things in themselves.

I am what I am, and intend to be it,' for which there will be no form in the world unless Jacob makes one for himself.

It is much more important to be oneself than anything else.

I find myself saying briefly and prosaically that it is much more important to be oneself than anything else. Do not dream of influencing other people, I would say, if I knew how to make it sound exalted.

Learn Everything that is Good from Others, but bring it in, and in your own way absorb it; do not become others.

And yet I adore him. I think he's quite crazy, and with no place or occupation in life, and far from happy, and philosophically irresponsible – and there is absolutely nobody like him.

It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow.

Theoretically there is no absolute proof that one's awakening in the morning (the finding oneself again in the saddle of one's personality) is not really a quite unprecedented event, a perfectly original birth.

There are teachers and students with square minds who are by nature meant to undergo the fascination of catagories. For them, 'schools' and 'movements' are everything; by painting a group symbol on the brow of mediocrity, they condone their own incomprehension of true genius.

The commentator may be excused for repeating what he has stressed in his own books and lectures, namely that offensive is frequently but a synonym for unusual; and a great work of art is of course always original, and thus by its very nature should come more or less as a shocking surprise.

that is his head, containing a brain of a different brand than that of the synthetic jellies preserved in the skulls around him

Now I shall spy on beauty as none has Spied on it yet. Now I shall cry out as None has cried out. Now I shall try what none Has tried. Now I shall do what none has done.

what makes a work of fiction safe from larvae and rust is not its social importance but its art, only its art

Geniusz to brak przystosowania.

offensive" is frequently but a synonym for "unusual; and a great work of art is of course always original, and thus by its very nature should come as a more or less shocking surprise.

for she soars with the wildest hyperbole when not tagging after the most pedestrian dictum.

The true measure of genius is in what measure the world he has created is his own, one that has not been here before him (at least, here, in literature) and, even more important, how plausible he has succeeded in making it.

Never use the competition as a benchmark

your offering needs to stand out as never before.

The only way to beat the competition is to stop trying to beat the competition.