Originality

“Originality is the art of concealing your sources”
Benjamin Franklin

“Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.”
Dr. Laurence J. Peter

“Originality is undetected plagiarism.”
W. R. Inge

“Utter originality is, of course, out of the question”
Ezra Pound

“About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.”
Josh Billings

“Imitation, if noble and general, insures the best hope of originality”
Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

“I invent nothing. I rediscover.”
Auguste Rodin

“Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed from one another. The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the prope.”
Voltaire

“Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about. “
W. H. Auden

“Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory is too good. “
Friedrich Nietzsche

“When you take stuff from one writer it's plagiarism; but when you take it from many writers, it's research.”
Wilson Mizner

“Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not have possibly met.”
Fran Lebowitz

2 comments:

tim said...

"History never repeats; at best it sometimes rhymes". Mark Twain

tim said...

Buddhist maxim "don't seek to do what they did; seek what they sought". (slightly contentious)