Originality Quotes

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
C. S. Lewis

Truth, Art, Before

A man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.
George Bernard Shaw

Good, Great, Courage

He's a man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.
George Bernard Shaw

Good, Great, Courage

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
Herman Melville

Succeed, Fail, Imitation

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.
Voltaire

Nothing, Another, Writers

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

Art, Forgetting, Hear

The burden of originality is one that most people don't want to accept. They'd rather sit in front of the TV and let that tell them what they're supposed to like, what they're supposed to buy, and what they're supposed to laugh at.
Marilyn Manson

Laugh, Tell, Rather

The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.
Thomas Carlyle

Sincerity, Merit, Novelty

The beauty is that through disappointment you can gain clarity, and with clarity comes conviction and true originality.
Conan O'Brien

Beauty, True, Through

Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.
Thomas Carlyle

Quarrel, Constantly

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.
Blaise Pascal

Men, Find, Between

Millions of men have lived to fight, build palaces and boundaries, shape destinies and societies; but the compelling force of all times has been the force of originality and creation profoundly affecting the roots of human spirit.
Ansel Adams

Men, Fight, Human

Originality is really important.
Jim Carrey

Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.
John Stuart Mill

The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger.
W. Somerset Maugham

Anger, Thought, General

Mistakes are the only universal form of originality.
Mason Cooley

Mistakes, Universal

All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.
John Stuart Mill

Good, Exist, Fruits

I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.
Steve Martin

Success, Learning, Comedy

Originality is not seen in single words or even in sentences. Originality is the sum total of a man's thinking or his writing.
Isaac Bashevis Singer

Single, Writing, Thinking

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

Good, Hope, Writer

The writer of originality, unless dead, is always shocking, scandalous; novelty disturbs and repels.
Simone de Beauvoir

Dead, Writer, Unless

As a rule, I am very careful to be shallow and conventional where depth and originality are wasted.
Lucy Maud Montgomery

Rule, Wasted, Careful

Originality is undetected plagiarism.
William Ralph Inge

Nearly all our originality comes from the stamp that time impresses upon our sensibility.
Charles Baudelaire

Time, Stamp, Impresses

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

Aim, Writers, Confuse

True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.
Edith Wharton

True, Vision, Manner

Originality is the essence of true scholarship. Creativity is the soul of the true scholar.
Nnamdi Azikiwe

True, Soul, Creativity

Originality is the art of concealing your source.
Franklin P. Jones

Art, Source, Concealing

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

Job, Done, Same

Originality is independence, not rebellion; it is sincerity, not antagonism.
George Henry Lewes

Sincerity, Rebellion, Antagonism

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