Quote Lady's Quotes by Subject, Originality

Originality

About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.--Josh Billings
All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.--John Stuart Mill (On Liberty)
Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.--Sir Cecil Beaton
Don't worry about your originality. You couldn't get rid of it even if you wanted to. It will stick with you and show up for better or worse in spite of all you or anyone else can do.--Robert Henri
He never chooses an opinion; he just wears whatever happens to be in style.--Leo Tolstoy
I am not eccentric. It's just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of goldfish.--Dame Edith Sitwell
In exploring new and doubtful tracts of speculation, the mind strikes out true and original views; as a drop of water hesitates at first what direction it will take, but afterwards follows its own course.--William Hazlitt ("On Novelty and Familiarity" Table Talk)
It is not easy to be a pioneer - but oh, it is fascinating! I would not trade one moment; even the worst moment, for all the riches in the world.--Elizabeth Blackwell
The original insight is most likely to come when elements stored in different compartments of the mind drift into the open, jostle one another, and now and then form new combinations.--Eric Hoffer (The Ordeal of Change)
Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not possibly have met.--Fran Lebowitz (Social Studies)
Originality consists not only in doing things differently, but also is "doing things Better."--Edward C. Skedman (Victorian Poets)
Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before, but in saying what you think yourself.--James Stephens
Originality exists in every individual because each of us differs from the others. We are all primary numbers divisible only by ourselves.--Jean Guitton
Originality implies being bold enough to go beyond accepted norms.--Anthony Storr (Solitude: A Return to the Self)
Originality is ... a by-product of sincerity.--Marianne Moore ("Marianne Moore Speaks" in Vogue, 1963)
Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.--Thomas Carlyle
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
Originality is nothing by judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.--Voltaire
Originality is simply a pair of fresh eyes.--Thomas W. Higginson
Originality is the art of concealing your source.--Franklin P. Jones
Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.--Lawrence J. Peter
Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of... They are more in need of originality, the less they are conscious of the want.--John Stuart Mill (On Liberty)
Originality is unexplored territory. You get there by carrying a canoe--you can't take a taxi.--Alan Alda
Others can give you a name or a number, but they can never tell you who you really are. That is something you yourself can only discover from within.--Thomas Merton (No Man an Island)
People are always talking about originality; but what do they mean? As soon as we are born, the world begins to work upon us, and this goes on to the end. What can we call our own except energy, strength, and will? If I could give an account of all that I owe to great predecessors and contemporaries, there would be but a small balance left in my favor.-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (in Conversations with Goethe, by Eckermann)
Success is creating something original and lasting--whether it is a company, a work of art, an idea or analysis that influences others, or a happy and productive family.--Linda Chevez
There are no original ideas. There are only original people.--Barbara Grizzuli Harrison (Foreign Bodies)
True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.--Edith Wharton (The Writing of Fiction)
We are all born originals--why is it so many of us die copies?--Edward Young
What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.--Dean Inge
When there is an original sound in the world, it makes a hundred echoes.--John Shedd
While an original is always hard to find, he is easy to recognize.--John L. Mason
The will to originality is not the will to be peculiar and unlike anybody else; it means the desire to derive one's consciousness from its primary source.--Nicolas Berdyeav (The Destiny of Man)
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 (Great Novelists and Their Works)
The writer of originality, unless dead, is always shocking, scandalous; novelty disturbs and repels.--Simone de Beauvoir
You've gotta be original, because if you're like someone else, what do they need you for?--Bernadette Peters