quotations about originality
Originality is independence, not rebellion; it is sincerity, not antagonism.
GEORGE HENRY LEWES
The Principles of Success in Literature
If you are cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Jane Eyre
All effort at originality must end either in the quaint or the monstrous. For no man knows himself as an original; he can only believe it on the report of others.
WASHINGTON ALLSTON
Lectures on Art and Poems
Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.
VOLTAIRE
attributed, Day's Collacon
More than a rejection or dissolution of the past, avant-garde originality is conceived as a literal origin, a beginning from ground zero, a birth.
ROSALIND E. KRAUSS
The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths
It takes a courageous fool to say things that have not been said and to do things that have not been done.
CRISS JAMI
Venus in Arms
Originality is another criterion of aesthetic value. We may formulate an originality principle, according to which highly valuable works of art provide hitherto unavailable insights.... Notice that, although originality is a necessary condition of high aesthetic value, it is far from a sufficient condition. Many original works have little or no aesthetic value. An artwork may present a novel but uninteresting perspective, or one that is original but wrong.
JAMES O. YOUNG
Art & Knowledge
Originality, as I understand it, is the capacity of doing something worthwhile and first. A man who can establish a school of painting as different from all other painting as were Corot's paintings from those of his time, is an originator. A man who can think along lines as trail-blazing as did Carlyle, is an original thinker--possesses originality. I am sorry for that kind of man. His very capacity will make him lonesome.
HENRY MCMASTERS
"On Originality", Originality and Other Essays
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
The painter with an original vision is always opposed by the schools. That is, at first. But when he wins out, then the schools merely take over his technique and use it as a club to put down the next creator. And so it goes.
HORACE HOLLEY
Pictures
Perhaps our originality manifests itself most strikingly in what we do with that which we did not originate. To discover something wholly new can be a matter of chance, of idle tinkering, or even of the chronic dissatisfaction of the untalented.
ERIC HOFFER
Reflections on the Human Condition
He has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality.
CHARLES LAMB
Essays of Elia
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
An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.
FRANCOIS-RENE DE CHATEAUBRIAND
The Genius of Christianity or the Spirit and Beauty of the Christian Religion
Nearly all our originality comes from the stamp that the time impresses upon our sensibility.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
"The Painter of Modern Life"
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
Originality is good, but none is absolute. Every giant stands on the shoulders of other giants and is therefore able to see more of the horizon.
NIYI OSUNDARE
"I am one of Africa's accidents", No Condition is Permanent
Originality is what distinguishes art from craft. It is the yardstick of artistic greatness.
HORST W. JANSON
History of Art: The Western Tradition
Originality is simply a fresh pair of eyes; if you want to astonish the world, tell the simple truth.
T. W. HIGGINSON
attributed, Day's Collacon
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