41 quotes found
“We do not imitate but are a model to others.”
“The crow that mimics a cormorant gets drowned.”
“We love in others what we lack ourselves and would be everything but what we are.”
“Immature poets imitate: mature poets steal.”
“Agesilaus the Spartan king was once invited to hear a mimic imitate the nightingale but declined with the comment that he had heard the nightingale itself.”
“It is impossible to imitate Voltaire without being Voltaire.”
“He who imitates what is evil always goes beyond the example that is set on the contrary he who imitates what is good always falls short.”
“A good imitation is the most perfect originality.”
“An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.”
“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.”
“Imitation is human intelligence in its most dynamic aspect.”
“Our historical experience teaches us that men imitate one another, that their attitudes are statistically calculable, their opinions manipulable, and that man is therefore less an individual (a sub...”
“In Paris, Julien’s position with regard to Madame de Renal would very soon have been simplified; but in Paris love is the child of the novels. The young tutor and his timid mistress would have foun...”
“Most people go on living their everyday life: frightened half indifferent they behold the ghostly tragi-comedy that has been performed on the international stage before the eyes and ears of the world.”
“We are in truth more than a half of what we are by imitation.”
“When people are free to do as they please they usually imitate each other.”
“Every man is a borrower and a mimic life is theatrical and literature a quotation.”
