#Originality Quotes

“It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature that a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion.”

“A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts; but as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our own.”

“Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.”

“The masses have no habit of self-reliance or original action.”

“The truth, the hope, of any time must be sought in the minorities. Michael Angelo was the conscience of Italy. We grow free with his name, and find it ornamental now, but in his own day his friends were few.”

“What is originality? It is being one's self, and reporting accurately what we see and are.”

“All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.”

“Most of the classical citations you shall hear or read in the current journals or speeches were not drawn from the originals, but from previous quotations in English books.”

“Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over influence. The literature of every nation bear me witness. The English dramatic poets have Shakspearized now for two hundred years.”

“Our debt to tradition through reading and conversation is so massive, our protest so rare and insignificant-and this commonly on the ground of other reading and hearing-that in large sense, one would say there is no pure originality. All minds quote. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. It is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.”

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

“When a man thinks happily, he finds no foot-track in the field he traverses. All spontaneous thought is irrespective of all else.”

“The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity.”

“I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”

“The sign and credentials of the poet are that he announces that which no man foretold”

“An original sentence, a step forward, is worth more than all the censures.”

“he who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions.”

“If all you do is follow the herd, you'll just be stepping in poop all day”

“We have listened too long to the courtly Muses of Europe.”

“He is great who is what he is from nature, and who never reminds us of others.”

“Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor.”

“The difference between Talent and Genius is that Talent says things which he has never heard but once, and Genius things which he has never heard.”

“In conversation the game is, to say something new with old words. And you shall observe a man of the people picking his way along, step by step, using every time an old boulder, yet never setting his foot on an old place.”

“Genius seems to consist merely in trueness of sight, in using such words as show that the man was an eye-witness, and not a repeater of what was told.”

“Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare.”

“The man who reads everything is like the man who eats everything: he can digest nothing, and the penalty of crowding one's mind with other men's thoughts is to have no thoughts of one's own.”

“There's not an idea in our heads that has not been worn shiny by someone else's brains.”

“We sometimes meet an original gentleman, who, if manners had not existed, would have invented them.”

“But the mark of American merit in painting, in sculpture, in poetry, in fiction, in eloquence, seems to be a certain grace withoutgrandeur, and itself not new but derivative; a vase of fair outline, but empty,--which whoso sees, may fill with what wit and character is in him, but which does not, like the charged cloud, overflow with terrible beauty, and emit lightnings on all beholders.”

“Originality will be rewarded in any line.”

“It is not permitted to a man, who takes up pen or chisel, to seek originality, for passion is his only business, and he cannot but mould or sing after a new fashion because no disaster is like another.”

“Imitation cannot go above its model.”

“What can I but enumerate old themes?”

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

“Men grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. But the moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning, anecdote, and all flock to their aid.”

“Originality is nothing but judicious plagiarism.”

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

“Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun.... there are millions of suns left, You shall no longer take things at second or third hand.... nor look through the eyes of the dead.... nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.”

“Lines slip easily down the accustomed grooves. The old designs are copied so glibly that we are half inclined to think them original, save for that very glibness.”

“A good imitation is the most perfect originality”

“A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages”

“Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.”

“When we are exalted by ideas, we do not owe this to Plato, but to the idea, to which also Plato was debtor.”

“In all my years of coaching, I have never been successful using somebody else's play.”

“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?”

“In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking.”

“A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”

“It may be expecting too much to expect most intellectuals to have common sense, when their whole life is based on their being uncommon -- that is, saying things that are different from what everyone else is saying. There is only so much genuine originality in anyone. After that, being uncommon means indulging in pointless eccentricities or clever attempts to mock or shock.”

“I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional.”

“Foolish consistencies are the hobgoblins of small minds!”