Quotes About Originality

No one really starts anything new, Mrs. Nemur. Everyone builds on other men's failures. There is nothing really original in science. What each man contributes to the sum of knowledge is what counts.

Half a man's life is devoted to what he calls improvements, yet the original had some quality which is lost in the process.

An imitator is a man who succeeds in being an imitation.

Let a man of genius make use [of photography] as it should be used, and he will raise himself to a height that we do not know.

One has to regard a man as a Master who can produce on average three uniquely brilliant and entirely original similes to every page.

What kind of man can name a child Moon Unit?

A man always writes absolutely well whenever he writes in his own manner, but the wigmaker who tries to write like Gellert ... writes badly.

The writer who cannot sometimes throw away a thought about which another man would have written dissertations, without worry whether or not the reader will find it, will never become a great writer.

We might define an eccentric as a man who is a law unto himself, and a crank as one who, having determined what the law is, insists on laying it down to others.

Lovely was my compliment. Could you not come up with your own?" "Lord Paen said compliment her, he did not say we had to be creative about it," the second man pointed out with a shrug

All men are creative but few are artists.

There is no faster way of destroying a man, or mocking his ideas, than making him fashionable.

Man naturally yearns for novelty.

But genius looks forward: the eyes of men are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates.

Every man is a new method.

When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.

Every man is an original and solitary character. None can either understand or feel the book of his own life like himself.

It seems to me that before a man tries to express anything to the world he must recognize in himself an individual, a new one, very distinct from others.

A man cannot wheedle nor overawe his Genius. It requires to be conciliated by nobler conduct than the world demands or can appreciate.

No two men are just alike. Every new life is a new thing under the sun; there has never been anything like it before, and never will be again.

Each man has his own way of being himself and of saying it so ultimately that he can't be denied.

Neither men, nor gods, nor booksellers' shelves permit ordinary poets to exist. [Lat., Mediocribus esse poetis Non homines, non di, non concessere columnae.]

A man is not necessarily a master because he happened to compose two or three centuries ago. Let us beware of the worship of mere antiquity.

There is no thrill of mortal danger to surpass that of a lone man trying to create something that never existed before.