quotations about originality
When you meet a man who announces himself as original, set him down unhesitatingly as a fraud or a victim of hallucination. Do not linger over him. It were as wise to dally with one who offers to make you a rainbow. There is such a thing as originality, and there are such things as rainbows. But they are not made to order. They occur.
ANONYMOUS
"Chasing the Goose Originality", The Linotype Bulletin, November/December 1921
It is necessary to any originality to have the courage to be an amateur.
WALLACE STEVENS
Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose
It is not permitted to a man, who takes up pen or chisel, to seek originality, for passion is his only business, and he cannot but mould or sing after a new fashion because no disaster is like another.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"Anima Hominis", Per Amica Silentia Lunae
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
Q: A Novel
The truly original mind is forever finding new things in the old. The greatest quality of originality is that it perceives something that has been staring all the time into the unseeing eyes of mankind.
ANONYMOUS
"Chasing the Goose Originality", The Linotype Bulletin, November/December 1921
Those who are ambitious of originality, and aim at it, are necessarily led by others, since they seek to be different from them.
R. WHATELY
Thoughts and Apophthegms from the writings of Archbiship Whately
No man knows himself as an original.
CHILO
attributed, Day's Collacon