Imitation Quotes

“Every man is a borrower and a mimic, life is theatrical and literature a quotation.”

“The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity.”

“Report of fashions in proud Italy Whose manners still our tardy-apish nation Limps after in base imitation”

“Envy is ignorance, Imitation is Suicide.”

“The intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate; and what is imitation but the travelling of the mind?”

“If you can't imitate him, don't copy him.”

“This fellow pecks up wit, as pigeons peas; And utters it again when God doth please: He is wit's pedler; and retails his wares.”

“Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can offer with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation, but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession.”

“Invention, using the term most broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the human race historically has walked.”

“Man is essentially the imitative animal. His whole educabilityand in fact the whole history of civilization depend on this trait, which his strong tendencies to rivalry, jealousy, and acquisitiveness reinforce.”

“Each of us is in fact what he is almost exclusively by virtue of his imitative-ness.”

“No living person is sunk so low as not to be imitated by somebody.”

“Imitation cannot go above its model.”

“Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.”

“In imitation is a bit suicide.”

“Nothing is so common as to imitate one's enemies, and to use their weapons.”

“A good imitation is the most perfect originality”

“As long as our people quote English standards they dwarf their own proportions.”

“Man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do.”

“There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide.”

“Is all literature eavesdropping, and all art Chinese imitation? our life a custom, and our body borrowed, like a beggar’s dinner, from a hundred charities?”

“Immitation is suicide.”

“There comes a time in each man's education in which he comes to the conclusion that envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide, and society in in conspiracy against each one of its members.”

“Art creates an incomparable and unique effect, and, having done so, passes on to other things. Nature, upon the other hand, forgetting that that imitation can be made the sincerest form of insult, keeps on repeating this effect until we all become absolutely wearied of it.”

“It is always better to be an original than an imitation.”