Originality Quotes - Page 20

• Nast is an artist of uncommon abilities. His works evince originality of conception, freedom of manner, lofty appreciation of national ideas and action, and a large artistic instinct.

  James Jackson Jarves

  Appreciation, Artist, Ideas

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• To admire on principle is the only way to imitate without loss of originality.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Art, Philosophy, Loss

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1834). “Biographia Literaria: Or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions”, p.58

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• Eccentricity is originality that leads nowhere.

  Mason Cooley

  Eccentricity

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• A writer does not own words any more than a painter owns colors. So lets dispense with this originality fetish… Look, listen and transcribe and forget about being original.

  William S. Burroughs

  Color, Doe, Looks

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• Originality is being different from oneself, not others.

  Philip Larkin

  Being Different, Different, Oneself

  Philip Larkin (2012). “Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica”, p.350, Faber & Faber

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• Give up on trying to be original. Every song has been sung, every picture has been painted, and every story has been told. The best one can do is sing, draw, or tell it again well.

  Evan Mandery

  Song, Giving Up, Trying

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• Photography is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one's own originality. It's a way of life.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photography, Way, Shouting

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• Writers tend to consider distinction and originality as virtues, but they are anathema to publishers.

  Thomas M. Disch

  Writing, Virtue, Anathema

  Thomas M. Disch (2000). “The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World”, p.211, Simon and Schuster

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• I've done really well so far in my career by trusting the audience to be as dissatisfied with convention as I am, as a film-goer. You want to go see a film that surprises you in some way.

  Christopher Nolan

  Careers, Done, Want

  Christopher Nolan, Jonah Nolan (2010). “Inception: The Shooting Script”, p.18, Insight Editions

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• Not like Homer would I write, Not like Dante if I might, Not like Shakespeare at his best, Not like Goethe or the rest, Like myself, however small, Like myself, or not at all.

  William Allingham

  Writing, Might, Ifs

  William Allingham (1884). “Blackberries picked off many bushes, by D. Pollex and others, put in a basket [verse, really written] by W. Allingham”

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• I'm not like anyone. I'm me.

  Elizabeth Taylor

  FaceBook post by Elizabeth Taylor from Aug 03, 2015

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• Originality is the only thing that counts. But the originator uses material and ideas that occur round him and pass through him. And out of his experience comes the original creation.

  George Gershwin

  Ideas, Use, Creation

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• The infallible criterion by which to distinguish the true from the would-be strategist is the degree of originality of his conceptions. It makes little difference whether this originality is carried to excess, as was the case with Steinitz and Nimzowitsch.

  Alexander Alekhine

  Differences, Would Be, Excess

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• It is always better to be an original than an imitation.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Imitation, Originals

  Theodore Roosevelt, Paul H. Jeffers (1998). “The Bully Pulpit: A Teddy Roosevelt Book of Quotations”, p.20, Taylor Trade Publications

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• Last summer I was staying at a house in Hampshire which was famous for the brilliance and the originality of its gardens. There were many of them, but the most beautiful of all was a walled garden in which every flower was blue. There were all the obvious things like delphiniums and acronitums and larkspurs, but the most beautiful blue of all came from the groups of cabbages - the ordinary blue pickling cabbage. Set against the blazing blue of the other flowers, it had a bloom and elegance which made it a thing of the greatest delight.

  Beverley Nichols

  Beautiful, Summer, Flower

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• Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with; as if, observes our author himself, any originality but our own could be expected to content us! In fact all strange thing are apt, without fault of theirs, to estrange us at first view, and unhappily scarcely anything is perfectly plain, but what is also perfectly common.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Views, Firsts, Faults

  Thomas Carlyle, Henry Duff Traill (2010). “The Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.11, Cambridge University Press

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• In my actual imaginative contact with life, I am vastly more responsive to beauty than to horror - indeed, I never experience real cosmic horror except in infrequent nightmares. However, when I come to record my various imaginative experiences, I generally find that only the horror items have any uniqueness or originality. Others have seen the same beautiful things that I have seen, & have sung them more nobly.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Beautiful, Real, Records

  Letter to Elizabeth Toldridge (8 March 1929), in "Selected Letters II, 1925-1929" edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, (pp. 316-317), 1968.

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• To overestimate the originality of one's thoughts is perhaps a less serious defect than being unaware of their newness. There is a more pronounced lack of sensitivity in underestimating (ourselves and others) than in overestimating.

  Eric Hoffer

  Serious, Underestimate, Sensitivity

  "Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook" by Tom Bethell in Harper's Magazine, July 2005.

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• May you discover your own special abilities and contribute them toward a better world.

  Charlene Costanzo

  Over You, Special, World

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• The bad teacher imposes his ideas and his methods on his pupils, and such originality as they may have is lost in the second-rate art of imitation.

  Stephen Neill

  Teacher, Art, Teaching

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• When our thoughts revolve we are so often deceived into supposing that their violent movement is an indication of their vigorous originality, the upheaval of prejudice and fixed ideas, when all the time it is more likely that the machine which contains them is only an elaborate cement-mixer, and when the thinking is finished, those whirling thoughts are smoothed into the unchanged conventional mould and seeing them set solid enough to dance, to build, to travel upon, we would never dream of their first deceit, of the hope once roused by their apparently violent reorganisation.

  Janet Frame

  Dream, Thinking, Ideas

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• That one tickled. If electrocution is your way of flirting, I commend you on your originality.

  Jeaniene Frost

  Flirting, Way, Ifs

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• Dedication to quality, community, and originality without exception.

  Zach Klein

  Dedication, Community, Quality

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• What tender and devoted mother wouldn't be dismayed and ill with terror at her son's or daughter's stepping even one hair's breath off the beaten track. No, better let him be happy and live in comfort without originality, is what every mother thinks when she rocks the cradle. The only person among us who can fail to reach the general's rank is the original man - in other words, the man who won't be quiet.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Daughter, Mother, Creativity

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• Don't compare yourself to anyone. Be happy to be the wonder unique, very special person that you are.

  Susan Polis Schutz

  Unique, Special, Wonder

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