Quotes About Originality

I'm one of those people, who when I draw birds I just draw flying mustaches.

Two most important things in a writer's wallet: library card and poetic license.

Modern poets mix much water with their ink.

It is bad enough to see one's own good things fathered on other people, but it is worse to have other people's rubbish fathered upon oneself.

He lik'd those literary cooks Who skim the cream of others' books; And ruin half an author's graces, By plucking bon-mots from their places...

The most original wits borrow from one another.

Let's have some new clichés!

Talleyrand, talking of a man who dealt in nothing but quotations, said, "That man has a mind of inverted commas."

When a thing has been said and well said, have no scruple: take it and copy it.

[B]ut in literature, it should be remembered, a thing always becomes his at last who says it best, and thus makes it his own.

What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.

But it is a cold, lifeless business, when you go to the shops to buy me something which does not represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith's.

Skipping: the ultimate display of nonconformity.

A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes.

Never walk on the traveled path because it only leads where others have been.

hey be ur own heck of a person, and dont copy what other people do or say. cause then it just makes u look really bad, then that person who u copyied will get mad at u. so grow up a little

It was the invention in the music that was so striking —the will to create what had never been heard before, through vocal tricks, rhythmic shifts, pieces of sound that didn't logically follow one from the other, that didn't make musical or even emotional sense when looked at as pieces, but as a whole spoke a new language.

I only write first editions.

Write a book, not the book.

Philosophy has become the shadow of itself over the years. Nine parts history and one part reflection on history. It has been ages since anything original came forth in the field. All the good thinking has already been done. Nowadays, philosophers are mostly institutionalized academics—like me—focused more on the politics of tenure than on philosophizing.

Avant tout les artistes sont des hommes qui veulent devenir inhu­mains. Ils cherchent péniblement les traces de l'inhu­manité, traces que l'on ne rencontre nulle part dans la nature.

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

Be regular and orderly in your life, that you may be violent and original in your work.

Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work.