Originality Quotes - Page 12

• Pearl Harbor is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on December 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. Its centerpiece is 40 minutes of redundant special effects, surrounded by a love story of stunning banality. The film has been directed without grace, vision, or originality, and although you may walk out quoting lines of dialog, it will not be because you admire them.

  Roger Ebert

  Two, Grace, Vision

  "Pearl Harbor" by Roger Ebert, www.rogerebert.com. May 25, 2001.

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• Newton expected no money from establishing his originality but rather desired recognition for his excellence.

  Tyler Cowen

  Excellence, Recognition, Newton

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• Solitude produces originality, bold and astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportianate, the absurd and the forbidden.

  Thomas Mann

  Solitude, Absurd, Produce

  Thomas Mann, Stanley Appelbaum (1995). “Death in Venice”, p.19, Courier Corporation

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• Object to merit and distinction, and you're setting your face against quality, independence, originality, genius against all the richness and variety of life. When you hold back the successful, you penalize those who need help.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Ambition, Successful, Independence

  Margaret Thatcher (1997). “The collected speeches of Margaret Thatcher”, HarperCollins

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• There was a part of me that felt afraid of people in Hollywood going: '**** Hollywood with their total lack of originality!'.

  Colin Farrell

  People, Hollywood, Felt

  "Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, & Jessica Biel Discuss ‘Total Recall’". Interview with Tiffany Rose, screenrant.com. August 7, 2012.

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• The modern child may early in his or her existence have natural inclinations toward spirituality. The child may have imagination, originality, a simple and individual response to reality, and even a tendency to moments of thoughtful silence and absorption. All these tendencies, however, are soon destroyed by the dominant culture. The child becomes a yelling, brash, false little monster, brandishing a toy gun or dressed up like some character he has seen on television.

  Thomas Merton

  Children, Character, Reality

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• I've never had a good game plan. At a certain point, making independent films became more and more appealing to me because I like freshness and originality.

  Jonathan Demme

  Independent, Games, Film

  "Jonathan Demme Talks NEIL YOUNG JOURNEYS". Interview with Sheila Roberts, collider.com. July 1, 2012.

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• Wherein lies a poet's claim to originality? That he invents his incidents? No. That he was present when his episodes had their birth? No. That he was first to repeat them? No. None of these things has any value. He confers on them their only originality that has any value, and that is his way of telling them.

  Mark Twain

  Lying, Way, Firsts

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• A painter like Picasso, who runs through many periods and phases, ends up by saying all those things which are on the tip of the tongue of the age to say, and finally sterilizes the originality of his contemporaries and juniors.

  Norbert Wiener

  Running, Age, Tongue

  Norbert Wiener (1988). “The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society”, p.120, Da Capo Press

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• I've tried not to exaggerate the glory of athletes. I'd rather, if I could, preserve a sense of proportion, to write about them asexcellent ballplayers, first-rate players. But I'm sure I have contributed to false values--as Stanley Woodward said, "Godding up those ballplayers."
  The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.

  Samuel Beckett

  Bible, Athlete, Writing

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• Three words that still have meaning, that I think we can apply to all professional writing, are discovery, originality, invention.The professional writer discovers some aspect of the world and invents out of the speech of his time some particularly apt and original way of putting it down on paper.

  John Dos Passos

  Writing, Thinking, Discovery

  John Dos Passos (1988). “John Dos Passos: the major nonfictional prose”

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• The world is forever babbling of originality; but there never yet was an original man, in the sense intended by the world; the first man himself--who according to the Rabbins was also the first author--not being an original; the only original author being God.

  Herman Melville

  God, Men, Forever

  Herman Melville (1971). “Pierre, Or The Ambiguities: Volume Seven, Scholarly Edition”, p.259, Northwestern University Press

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• Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last.

  Samuel Johnson

  Long, Literature, Lasts

  In James Boswell 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' (1791) vol. 2, p. 449 (20 March 1776)

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• If in many of my productions terror has been the thesis, I maintain that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Soul, Germany, Terror

  Edgar Allan Poe (1984). “Poetry and Tales”, p.129, Library of America

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• In this world that we live in we have originality in literature, but we also have TV and movies. I write love stories. I could never write a love story based on the Titanic - that was never a novel. If I see an idea that's been done in film, I try to avoid that.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Writing, Ideas, Trying

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• Great authors, when they write about causes, adduce not only those they think are true but also those they do not believe in, provided they have some originality and beauty. They speak truly and usefully enough if they speak ingeniously.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Beauty, Truth, Believe

  Michel de Montaigne (1976). “The Complete Essays of Montaigne”

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• Writing itself, if not misunderstood and abused, becomes a way of empowering the writing self. It converts anger and disappointment into deliberate and durable aggression, the writer's main source of energy. It converts sorrow and self-pity into empathy, the writer's main means of relating to otherness. Similarly, his wounded innocence turns into irony, his silliness into wit, his guilt into judgment, his oddness into originality, his perverseness into his stinger.

  Ted Solotaroff

  Disappointment, Mean, Writing

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• Originality is nothing but judicious plagiarism.

  Voltaire

  Creativity, Plagiarism

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• Every man is an original and solitary character. None can either understand or feel the book of his own life like himself.

  Richard Cecil

  Book, Character, Men

  Richard Cecil, Josiah PRATT (the Elder.) (1854). “Remains of the Rev. Richard Cecil ... With a view of his character, by the Rev. Josiah Pratt ... To which is prefixed a memoir of his life signed: J. Cecil . Tenth edition”, p.53

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• Chess problems demand from the composer the same virtues that characterize all worthwhile art: originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Art, Demand, Chess

  Vladimir Nabokov (2015). “Letters to V??ra”, p.531, Knopf

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• The ordinary American voter does not object to mediocrity. He likes his candidate to be sensible, vigorous, and, above all, what he calls 'magnetic,' and does not value, because he sees no need for, originality or profundity, a fine culture or a wide knowledge.

  James Bryce

  Needs, Culture, Mediocrity

  James Bryce (1920). “The American Commonwealth: Vol. 1: The National Government”, p.43, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Our teachers were absolute tyrants. They had no sympathy with youth; their one object was to stuff our brains and turn us into erudite apes like themselves. If any pupil showed the slightest trace of originality, they persecuted him relentlessly, and the only model pupils whom I have ever got to know have all been failures in after-life.

  Adolf Hitler

  Teacher, Tyrants, Brain

  Adolf Hitler (1953). “Secret Conversations, 1941-1944”

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• The incompatibility of aquacity with the erratic originality of genius.

  James Joyce

  Genius, Erratic, Incompatibility

  James Joyce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of James Joyce (Illustrated)”, p.734, Delphi Classics

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• Beware originality. In women fashion originality can lead to carnival.

  Coco Chanel

  Fashion, Carnivals

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• Why should Cornishmen learn Cornish? There is no money in it, it serves no practical purpose, and the literature is scanty and of no great originality or value. The question is a fair one, the answer is simple. Because they are Cornish.

  Henry Jenner

  Simple, Purpose, Answers

  Henry Jenner (2012). “A Handbook of the Cornish Language: Chiefly in Its Latest Stages, with Some Account of Its History and Literature”, p.11, Cambridge University Press

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