51 Imitation Quotes

The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others.

Weaknesses in men of genius are usually an exaggeration of their personal feeling; in the hands of feeble imitators they become the most flagrant blunders. Entire schools have been founded on misinterpretations of certain aspects of the masters. Lamentable mistakes have resulted from the thoughtless enthusiasm with which men have sought inspiration from the worst qualities of remarkable artists because they are unable to reproduce the sublime elements in their work.

Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.

Imitation, if it is not forgery, is a fine thing. It stems from a generous impulse, and a realistic sense of what can and cannot be done.

Is there something in druggy subjects that encourages directors to make imitation film noir? Film noir itself becomes an addiction.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term 'Art,' I should call it 'the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.' The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of 'Artist.'

To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite.

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.

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.

'The human is indissolubly linked with imitation: a human being only becomes human at all by imitating other human beings.'

I copied Jackson's style because I thought he was the greatest hitter I had ever seen, the greatest natural hitter I ever saw. He's the guy who made me a hitter.

It is possible to build a virtual-reality generator whose repertoire includes every possible environment. (Ch. 6)

It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness. And if it be said, that continual success is a proof that a man wisely knows his powers,-it is only to be added, that, in that case, he knows them to be small. Let us believe it, then, once for all, that there is no hope for us in these smooth pleasing writers that know their powers.

A painter must not only be of necessity an imitator of the works of nature...but he must be as necessarily an imitator of the works of other painters: this appears more humiliating, but is equally true; and no man can be an artist, whatever he may suppose, upon any other terms.

I do not know if 'Alice in Wonderland' was an original story - I was, at least, no conscious imitator in writing it - but I do know that, since it came out, something like a dozen story-books have appeared, on identically the same pattern. The path I timidly explored believing myself to be 'the first that ever burst into that silent sea' - is now a beaten high-road: all the way-side flowers have long ago been trampled into the dust: and it would be courting disaster for me to attempt that style again.

This practically amounts to saying that much that it is legitimate to admire in this field need nevertheless not be imitated, and that religious phenomena, like all other human phenomena, are subject to the law of the golden mean. Political reformers accomplish their successive tasks in the history of nations by being blind for the time to other causes. Great schools of art work out the effects which it is their mission to reveal, at the cost of a one-sidedness for which other schools must make amends. We accept a John Howard, a Mazzini, a Botticelli, a Michael Angelo, with a kind of indulgence. We are glad they existed to show us that way, but we are glad there are also other ways of seeing and taking life. So of many of the saints we have looked at. We are proud of a human nature that could be so passionately extreme, but we shrink from advising others to follow the example.

One, though he be excellent and the chief, is not to be imitated alone; for never no imitator ever grew up to his author; likeness is always on this side truth. Yet there happened in my time one noble speaker, who was full of gravity in his speaking; his language (where he could spare or pass by a jest) was nobly censorious. No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough, or look aside from him, without loss. He commanded where he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion. No man had their affections more in his power. The fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end.

Music has basically followed a shallow route for 50 years. People come along, do something really cool and different, everyone copies them, the original gets diluted, distorted, and eventually the diluted, in most cases, achieves more success than the thing that started it. And I kinda thought the alternative scene was gonna be different: We thought 'Brave new world!' So it's really weird to be competing against the imitators. It wasn't always comfortable competing against Nirvana, and it was certainly not healthy living under that shadow at times. But at least there was honor in it. We always respected that it was a great band - Pearl Jam too. But competing against Bush?! It's nothing to get your dick hard about, you know what i mean? There's no mojo in that!

When Croft's 'Life of Dr. Young' was spoken of as a good imitation of Dr. Johnson's style, 'No, no,' said he, 'it is not a good imitation of Johnson; it has all his pomp without his force; it has all the nodosities of the oak, without its strength; it has all the contortions of the sibyl, without the inspiration.'

He had total love in his eyes when he performed. He was the total androgynous beauty. I would practice Elvis in front of the mirror when I was twelve or thirteen years old.

Once the good man was dead, one wore his hat and another his sword as he had worn them, a third had himself barbered as he had, a fourth walked as he did, but the honest man that he was - nobody any longer wanted to be that.

The intercourse with reasonable people is advisable to everybody because, in this way, a blockhead can become wise by imitation, for the greatest blockheads can imitate, even apes and elephants can do it.

My child arrived just the other day, He came to the world in the usual way. But there were planes to catch, and bills to pay. He learned to walk while I was away. And he was talking 'fore I knew it, and as he grew, He'd say, 'I'm gonna be like you, dad. You know I'm gonna be like you.'

We are never such kleptomaniacs as in our juvenilia. We steal from our masters. We steal from our friends, from our enemies even. We try out tones of voice for which we are ill suited. We write as if we belong to some other period. We are suckers for gorgeous words such as nenuphar, asphodel, and pelf. And because we are not yet in command of our vehicle we get out of control. We reveal ourselves inadvertently and we inadvertently commit ourselves to some point of view that really isn't 'us' at all.

That man always made it a point to speak German, although he spoke English well enough. That was because he imitated Hitler to the last degree. He would say that his reason for speaking German instead of English during conferences with English-speaking representatives was that he wanted to concentrate on the subject in hand, and not on the language. Ribbentrop was a complete imitator of Hitler - even to the design of his cap. Originally he had a nice cap, but then he imitated the stationmaster type of cap preferred by Hitler.

Somewhere in the trash he reads Martland has read that heavy men walk with surprising lightness and grace; as a result he trips about like a portly elf hoping to be picked up by a leprechaun.

I've seen the little tidal waves that I've caused in the music industry, and how people are becoming more evolved in their images. And there are a lot of new Marilyn Manson-esque people, but I don't get mad at those things. It's like there's one real Santa Claus, but there's a lot of fake ones at the mall.

Igor (Marty Feldman) (limping off): 'Walk this way' - and Dr. Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) limps off after him.

The Michelangelos of this world are not to be imitated; it is too difficult, and too dangerous.

I am not happy with all the analysis that go with just classical theory, because nature is not classic, dammit, and if you want to make a simulation of nature you'd better make it quantum mechanical and by golly it is a wonderful problem.

The problem is that women try to dress like celebrities whose shape they just don't have. When you emulate someone else's dress sense with a different body shape it just doesn't work. And when you look bad, your confidence dips. Our advice is to go shopping armed with our body shape rules.

Rien n'est si ordinaire que d'imiter ses ennemis, et d'employer leurs armes.

My prize would be for a visually appealing world in which the life-forms have a visible, and preferably 3-D, morphology on the computer screen. They must evolve adaptations not just to 'inanimate' factors like the weather (which would produce essentially predictable, not emergent evolution) but to other evolving life forms (which is a recipe for emergent properties).

I have thus played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt, to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas Browne, to Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne, to Baudelaire and to Obermann.

We are not imitating Hitler and Mussolini. They are imitating us. They have just discovered what we knew for centuries: that a corporate, collectivist system pays.

...for nothing can be more reasonable, than that slaves and flatterers should exact the same taxes on all below them, which they themselves pay to all above them.