quotations about originality
Originality is a swan. The moment you chase her, she turns into a goose. When you touch originality, it vanishes. It is one of those things that you have lost the moment you consciously seek for it. It flees before its own name like a ghost at cock-crow. It is an unhappy moment when we think: "Now I am doing something original," for in that moment we have missed it.
ANONYMOUS
The Linotype Bulletin, November/December 1921
To do merely the unusual, the bizarre, the different, the first-time thing, is not to accomplish the original. If it isn't worth something to yourself and to others it is not original in the true sense. So far as I see there isn't anything worthy of the modification of a clean-cut adjective that doesn't measure up to a certain standard.
HENRY MCMASTERS
"On Originality", Originality and Other Essays
Original ideas do not rain down from heaven on an empty skull, nor are they created in trance. They are a perfectly practical product of knowledge, experience, and ability. They are original not because they are different, but because they are the best ideas for the specific purpose.
ANONYMOUS
"Chasing the Goose Originality", The Linotype Bulletin, November/December 1921
All those things I stated about originality being smothered with the de-oxygenized air of commercialism are true ... unless the fire of originality is the undying flame of genius, unless it is the ceaseless light that nature gives to some of her favored sons and daughters and tells them to go forth into the dark places. When that light is once turned on in a human brain, all the avarice of business, all the commercialized powers of the world, all the grinding routine that deadens the faculties of ordinary people, merely makes the light of originality to shine the brighter, for darkness is the greatest background one can have against which to display light.
HENRY MCMASTERS
"On Originality", Originality and Other Essays
An original mind is rarely understood, until it has been reflected from some half-dozen congenial with it, so averse are men to admitting the true in an unusual form; whilst any novelty, however fantastic, however false, is greedily swallowed.
WASHINGTON ALLSTON
Lectures on Art and Poems
Originality is intelligent independence. Like all independence it must be fought for and paid for. Why should the possessor of originality complain? Hasn't he something that few possess? Isn't it worth more to him than all the country houses, the yachts, the limousines and the bank balances of all the men he knows? If the man with originality doesn't think it worth more than mere wealth, if he complain because it isn't readily saleable like the capacity to lay bricks or chauffeur a motor car, then he is not worthy, and the unworthy do not long retain possession of originality.
HENRY MCMASTERS
"On Originality", Originality and Other Essays
Almost all the great original achievements have been the obvious ones--things that were pleading to be done.
ANONYMOUS
"Chasing the Goose Originality", The Linotype Bulletin, November/December 1921
If a man were to look over the fence on one side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his left had laid his garden path round a central lawn; and were to look over the fence on the other side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his right had laid his path down the middle of the lawn, and were then to lay his own garden path diagonally from one corner to the other, that man's soul would be lost. Originality is only to be praised when not prefaced by the look to right and left.
QUENTIN CRISP
The Naked Civil Servant
Originality provokes originality.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
attributed, Day's Collacon
We come too late to say anything which has not been said already.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
Be different. Be original. Nobody will remember a specific flower in a garden filled with thousands of the same yellow flower, but they will remember the one that managed to change its color to purple.
SUZY KASSEM
Rise Up and Salute the Sun
In one sense, originality is not only within the reach of each rational being, but is an indispensable element in true mental development. Thought is only thought in so far as it is original. Mere mechanical movements of the mind, mere repeating, borrowing, accepting, does not deserve the name of thinking.
A. I. J.
"Originality", The Chronicle, Volume IV
Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
When a schoolboy has original ideas, they are usually confined to spelling.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
attributed, The Lincoln Treasury
What the world calls originality is only an unaccustomed method of tickling it.
BERNARD SHAW
Shaw on Shakespeare
Every man is an original and solitary character. None can either understand or feel the book of his own life like himself.
LORD BURLEIGH
attributed, Day's Collacon
Many people ... go through life with hardly an original thought; gravitate from one pleasure or amusement to another; gain a livelihood doing what someone else has assigned; flee boredom as best they can; marry and beget children; and then, without having made the slightest difference of any unique significance, die and decay like any animal.
RICHARD TAYLOR
Restoring Pride: The Lost Virtue of Our Age
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 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