Originality Quotes - page 2

In European thought in general, as contrasted with American, vigor, life and originality have a kind of easy, professional utterance. American - on the other hand, is expressed in an eager amateurish way. A European gives a sense of scope, of survey, of consideration. An American is strained, sensational. One is artistic gold; the other is bullion. (Wallace Stevens)
Pearl Harbor is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on December 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. Its centerpiece is 40 minutes of redundant special effects, surrounded by a love story of stunning banality. The film has been directed without grace, vision, or originality, and although you may walk out quoting lines of dialog, it will not be because you admire them. View quote
Roger Ebert
"This sucks on so many levels." - Dialogue from "Jason X" Rare for a movie to so frankly describe itself. "Jason X" sucks on the levels of storytelling, character development, suspense, special effects, originality, punctuation, neatness and aptness of thought. View quote
Roger Ebert
Pain is always new to the sufferer, but loses its originality for those around him. View quote
Alphonse Daudet
I thought I was clever enough to write as well as these people and I didn't realize that there is something called originality and your own voice. View quote
Amy Tan
Originality is a return to the origin. View quote
Antoni Gaudí
Every true poet, I thought, must be original and originality a condition of poetic genius; so that each poet is like a species in nature (not an individuum genericum or specificum ) and can never recur. That nothing shd. be old or borrowed however cannot be. View quote
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Originality consists in trying to be like everybody else - and failing. View quote
Raymond Radiguet
No one wants my painting because it is different from other people's - peculiar, crazy public that demands the greatest possible degree of originality on the painter's part and yet won't accept him unless his work resembles that of the others! View quote
Paul Gauguin
As long as you can Houdini your way out of the Sisyphean constraints then originality happens. View quote
David Mitchell (author)
Originality is the most deadly mirage in all of art. You can chase it from now until doomsday, and you'll only find yourself lost and dying of thirst. (Caitlín R. Kiernan)
Self-projection is, more often than not, the move of the minor craftsman, of the tactics of the hour whose inherent weakness is, precisely, that of originality. View quote
George Steiner
Nearly all our originality comes from the stamp that time impresses upon our sensibility. View quote
Charles Baudelaire
Originality is the art of concealing your sources. View quote
Franklin P. Jones
To overestimate the originality of one's thoughts is perhaps a less serious defect than being unaware of their newness. There is a more pronounced lack of sensitivity in underestimating (ourselves and others) than in overestimating. View quote
Eric Hoffer
Millions of men have lived to fight, build palaces and boundaries, shape destinies and societies; but the compelling force of all times has been the force of originality and creation profoundly affecting the roots of human spirit. View quote
Ansel Adams
Geniuses and prophets do not usually excel in professional learning, and their originality, if any, is often due precisely to the fact that they do not. View quote
Joseph Schumpeter
With its claims to profundity, boldness and originality, thinking still limits itself provisionally to the exclusively rational and scientific. ... As soon as it lays hold of the feelings, it becomes spirit. View quote
Robert Musil
The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers. View quote
Arthur Koestler
The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even - if you will - eccentricity. That is, something that can't be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned imposter couldn't be happy with. View quote
Joseph Brodsky
About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment. (Josh Billings)
..."originality” is everyone's aim, and novel techniques are as much prized as new scientific discoveries. [T. S. ] Eliot states it with surprising naïveté: "It is exactly as wasteful for a poet to do what has been done already as for a biologist to rediscover Mendel's discoveries.”. View quote
Randall Jarrell
Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man... View quote
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Don't worry about your originality. You couldn't get rid of it even if you wanted to. It will stick with you and show up for better or worse in spite of all you or anyone else can do. View quote
Robert Henri
I believe the structure of 'House of Leaves' is far more difficult to explain than it is to read. And while I'd like to lay claim to some extraordinary act of originality, truth is I'm only taking advantage of capabilities inherent in everyone. View quote
Mark Z. Danielewski