Mimicry Quotes

• Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

  Oscar Wilde

  Being Yourself, Love Yourself, Taken

  Letter to Alfred Douglas, Jan. - Mar. 1897

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• I said I have no powers of invention. Well, I also have no powers of mimicry.

  Norman MacCaig

  Literature, Invention, Said

  34 Copy quote

• You can hide as cleverly as you like, but in the final analysis mimicry is deception, pure and simple. It doesn't solve a thing.

  Haruki Murakami

  Simple, Deception, Analysis

  Haruki Murakami (2011). “1Q84:”, p.102, Random House

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• The character of the crowds is made up of mimicry and hostility.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Character, Crowds, Made

  13 Copy quote

• Quite honestly, if I were doing work related to a living being or historical being where there was visual or audio recordings available, I would find that extremely difficult because I don't know how you would avoid the process of mimicry. And mimicry, to me at any rate, is a very dull prospect.

  Daniel Day-Lewis

  Historical, Audio, Dull

  16 Copy quote

• Every athlete learns by theft and mimicry.

  Pat Conroy

  Athlete, Theft

  Pat Conroy (2002). “My Losing Season”, Nan A. Talese

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• A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

  Oscar Wilde

  Inspirational, Funny, Witty

  Oscar Wilde (2016). “Aphorisms”, p.64, Oscar Wilde

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  The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Happy Birthday, Growing Up

  "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young" (1894)

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• Alas, how right the ancient saying is: We, who are old, are nothing else but noise And shape. Like mimicries of dreams we go, And have no wits, although we think us wise.

  Euripides

  Wise, Dream, Thinking

  14 Copy quote
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  It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

  Oscar Wilde

  People, Luck, Enemy

  LadyWindermere's Fan act 1 (1892)

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• I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Clever, Hipster

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.153, Wordsworth Editions

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• Even a man's exact imitation of the song of the nightingale displeases us when we discover that it is a mimicry, and not the nightingale.

  Immanuel Kant

  Song, Men, Imitation

  11 Copy quote

• It requires courage to face and to conquer the immense weight of inertia and the dead and dying traditions and sophistications that clutter the minds of men and mould them into the mimicry of living ways.

  Lawren Harris

  Courage, Men, Mind

  18 Copy quote

• I am not young enough to know everything.

  James M. Barrie

  Book, Athlete, Knowledge

  The Admirable Crichton (performed 1902, pubd. 1914) act 1

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• Having financial independence does not increase one's chances of independent, artistic creation whatsoever. Our conditioned behavior toward mimicry for the sake of market forces is an amazing syndrome. The watchtowers guide us well.

  Fady Joudah

  Independent, Independence, Doe

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.

  Oscar Wilde

  Love, Inspirational, Funny

  Oscar Wilde (1947). “The Happy Prince”, p.16, New Line Publishing

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• It's tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die. 'Nothing is more rare in any man', says Emerson, 'than an act of his own.' It is quite true. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their life is a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

  Oscar Wilde

  Passion, Men, People

  Oscar Wilde (1977). “The illustrated Oscar Wilde”

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• I’m a big fan of parrots - I think they’re fascinating creatures. Many of them live for longer than us humans and it's interesting to me the way they learn to mimic human voices even though they don't really comprehend what they're saying.

  Derren Brown

  Thinking, Voice, Interesting

  225 Copy quote

• Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

  Oscar Wilde

  Graduation, Education, Time

  Epigrams: Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young Sebastian Melmoth

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• Although I could never get used to the constant state of anxiety in which the guilty, the great, and the tenderhearted live, I felt I was doing my best in the way of mimicry.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Anxiety, Way, Guilty

  Vladimir Nabokov (2016). “Lolita”, p.103, Hamilton Books

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• What seems different in yourself; that's the rare thing you possess. The one thing that gives each of us his worth, and that's just what we try to suppress. And we claim to love life.

  Andre Gide

  Love Life, Giving, Trying

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• With mimicry, with praises, with echoes, or with answers, the poets have all but outsung the bell. The inarticulate bell has found too much interpretation, too many rhymes professing to close with her inaccessible utterance, and to agree with her remote tongue. The bell, like the bird, is a musician pestered with literature.

  Alice Meynell

  Echoes, Bird, Musician

  Alice Meynell (2013). “The Essential Alice Meynell Collection”, p.225, eBookIt.com

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• Jamie Foxx does a good rendition of me. It's a real gift, mimicry of that kind, the tonal thing. It's sort of like having a talent for playing an instrument.

  Al Pacino

  Real, Doe, Talent

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• Yet I'm sure there's something more to be read in a man. People dare not -- they dare not turn the page. The laws of mimicry -- I call them the laws of fear. People are afraid to find themselves alone, and don't find themselves at all. I hate this moral agoraphobia -- it's the worst kind of cowardice. You can't create something without being alone. But who's trying to create here? What seems different in yourself: that's the one rare thing you possess, the one thing which gives each of us his worth; and that's just what we try to suppress. We imitate. And we claim to love life.

  Andre Gide

  Love, Hate, Men

  26 Copy quote

• If one plays good music, people don't listen and if one plays bad music people don't talk.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Music, Witty

  Oscar Wilde (2004). “The Best of Oscar Wilde: Selected Plays and Writings”, p.257, Penguin

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