Quotes About Originality

No one should ever imitate the style of another because, with regard to art, he will be called a nephew and not a child of nature.

I never use nature as a starting point. I never abstract from nature; I never consciously think of nature when I paint.

Is the painter a plagiarist because he sets his palette to nature?

Every single thing you see on-screen came out of somebody's creativity. It doesn't exist. Nature didn't deliver it to us. Everything had to be dreamed.

Why should I copy this owl, this sea urchin? Why should I try to imitate nature? I might just as well try to trace a perfect circle.

By nature, men love newfangledness.

Do not imitate one another's style. If you do, so far as your art is concerned you will be called a grandson, rather than the son of Nature.

Even with all the documents, you can never forge nature

If you are cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it.

Reality is obtained not by imitation, but by producing the sense of nature.

Artists have made innovations in many areas... But whatever the nature of an artist's innovation, its importance ultimately depends on the extent of its influence on other artists.

The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of Artist

An artist, under pain of oblivion, must have confidence in himself, and listen only to his real master: Nature.

Doubtless there are things in nature which have not yet been seen. If an artist discovers them, he opens the way for his successors.

Go to the source for ideas, go to the Metropolitan Museum, find your inspiration in nature, go to the Museum of Natural History, but never rely on something that someone else has done.

I'm not really part of any group or clique or gang because that's always been my nature.

Nobody in this world was born to be the same as anyone else. Turning people into robots, especially children, is a crime against nature itself.

Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote.

Painting embraces and contains within itself all the things which nature produces or which results from the fortuitous actions of men... he is but a poor master who makes only a single figure well.

New arts are long in the world before poets describe them; for they borrow everything from their predecessors, and commonly derive very little from nature or from life.

Everything in art is but a copy of nature.

Art must be in touch with nature - and wherever that touch is gone, Art degenerates - yet it must be above nature.

So true it is, that nature has caprices which art cannot imitate.

Let us imitate nature—not each other.