Originality Quotes - Page 5

• I believe that... my first successes in my out-of-focus pictures were a fluke. That is to say, that when focusing and coming to something which, to my eye, was very beautiful, I stopped there instead of screwing on the lens to the more definite focus which all other photographers insist upon.

  Julia Margaret Cameron

  Beautiful, Believe, Eye

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• Anything really new is repulsive, because it is abnormal and unreasonable.

  Asger Jorn

  Abnormal, Unreasonable

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• Human nature has a much greater genius for sameness than for originality.

  James Russell Lowell

  Genius, Human Nature, Humans

  James Russell Lowell (1871). “My Study Windows”, p.63

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• Imitation, if noble and general, insures the best hope of originality.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Imagination, Noble, Imitation

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• Whoever the master is whom you prefer, this must only be a directive for you. Otherwise you will never be anything but an imitator.

  Paul Cezanne

  Masters, Imitator

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• I really do not aim at any originality.

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  Aim

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• One couldn't carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything has been said better than we can put it ourselves.

  George Eliot

  Life, Littles, Facts

  George Eliot (2009). “Daniel Deronda”, p.150, Oxford Paperbacks

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• There is no such thing as a completely original technique or subject.

  Donald Lambert

  Technique, Subjects, Originals

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• Abstract and conceptual painters face different demons than representational painters, but neither group has a monopoly on either authenticity or originality.

  Steven Whitney

  Groups, Different, Faces

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• I don't believe too much in originality... you learn art from other art and then looking into somebody's face or landscape is the point of departure to do your work of art.

  Paterson Ewen

  Art, Believe, Faces

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• Nothing is new except arrangement.

  Will Durant

  Writing, Creativity, Arrangements

  Will Durant (2002). “Heroes of History: A Brief History of Civilization from Ancient Times to the Dawn of the Modern Age”, p.165, Simon and Schuster

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• What stories are new? All types of all characters march through all fables.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Character, Stories, Fables

  William Makepeace Thackeray (1854). “The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family”, p.4

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• There is nothing new under the sun, not even Manet.

  Jules Breton

  Old Things, Sun, Ecclesiastes

  Jules Breton (1891). “The Life of an Artist: Art and Nature”

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• To be original one needs to learn the ideas of other painters in order to be different from them.

  Edgar Alwin Payne

  Order, Ideas, Different

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• All thoughtful men are solitary and original in themselves.

  James Russell Lowell

  Thoughtful, Men, Solitary

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• Ice dance should not be seen as a rigid conformist form of figure skating. There is a great deal of freedom and originality to be had.

  Robin Cousins

  Athlete, Ice, Skating

  "Cousins Continues to Entertain". Golden Skate Interview, goldenskate.com. December 6, 2003.

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• They who have light in themselves will not revolve as satellites.

  Seneca the Younger

  Light, Satellites

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• Men have their intellectual ancestry, and the likeness of some one of them is forever unexpectedly flashing out in the features of a descendant, it may be after a gap of several centuries. In the parliament of the present every man represents a constituency of the past.

  James Russell Lowell

  Past, Men, Forever

  "The poetical works of John Keats. With a memoir, by James Russell Lowell" by John Keats, James Russell Lowell, New York: J. Miller, 1871.

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• The originality of a subject is in its treatment.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Treatment, Subjects

  Benjamin Disraeli (1875). “Collected Edition of the Novels and Tales”, p.184

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• Assimilate all you can from tradition and then say things in your own way.

  John French Sloan

  Way, Tradition

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• I would rather be the author of one original thought than conqueror of a hundred battles. Yet moral excellence is so much superior to intellectual, that I ought to esteem one virtue more valuable than a hundred original thoughts.

  William Benton Clulow

  Excellence, Intellectual, Battle

  William Benton Clulow (1843). “Aphorisms and Reflections: A Miscellany of Thought and Opinion”, p.295

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• The only thing worth doing is what's never been done before.

  David Salle

  Done

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• The beauty is that through disappointment you can gain clarity, and with clarity comes conviction and true originality.

  Conan O'Brien

  Disappointment, Gains, Clarity

  "10 of Hollywood's Most Memorable Commencement Speeches" by Courtney Idasetima, www.hollywoodreporter.com. April 30, 2018.

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• Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature.

  Jean Cocteau

  Jobs, Light, Done

  "A Call to Order". Book by Jean Cocteau, 1926.

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• Because of this, originality consists in returning to the origin.

  Antonio Gaudi

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