4 Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes on Originality

Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes on originality

4. The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.

44. Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.

276. Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.

279. Genius borrows nobly. When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies: 'Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life.'