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It looked like something resembling white marble, which was probably what it was: something resembling white marble. (Douglas Adams)
The human is indissolubly linked with imitation: a human being only becomes human at all by imitating other human beings. (Theodor W. Adorno)
Imitation is the sincerest form of television. (Fred Allen)
- The Mezzanine...
When you are capable of skillful imitation, the sweep of choices before you is too large; but when your brain loses its spare capacity, and along with it some agility, some joy in winging it, and the ambition to do things that don't suit it, then you finally have to settle down to do well the few things that your brain really can do well - the rest no longer seems pressing and distracting, because it is now permanently out of reach. (Nicholson Baker)
You may imitate, but never counterfeit. (Honore de Balzac)
When inspiration dies, imitation thrives. (Darby Bannard)
Who would dare assign to art the sterile function of imitating nature? (Charles Baudelaire)
It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection. (The Bhagavad Gita)
Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire. (Christian Nestell Bovee)
What is real is not the external form, but the essence of things... it is impossible for anyone to express anything essentially real by imitating its exterior surface. (Constantin Brancusi)
We must not imitate that which we seek to create. (Georges Braque)
Imitation is the most annoying form of flattery. (Peter Bray)
Imitation is the greatest danger of the young [artist]. (Alexey Brodovitch)
Imitation, if noble and general, ensures the best hope of originality. (Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton)
It is as well not to have too great an admiration for your master's work. You will be in less danger of imitating him. (Mary Cassatt)
If you imitate the forms of a single artist through constant practice, your intelligence would have to be crude indeed for you not to get some nourishment from them. (Cennino Cennini)
The original writer is not the one who refrains from imitating others, but the one who can be imitated by none. (Francois Rene de Chateaubriand)
Imitation is the sincerest of flattery. (Charles Caleb Colton)
Imitators always make the defects of the original more conspicuous. (John Constable)
Don't imitate, don't follow the others, or else you will lag behind them. (Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot)
Please, do not imitate my method of artistry and fame; save yourself from the pain. (Kris Courtney)
Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing. (Salvador Dali)
Emulation and imitation can legitimately influence one's development, but ultimately the artist must find his own path – and be true to himself. (Ken Danby)
Art imitates nature as well as it can, as a pupil follows his master; thus it is sort of a grandchild of God. (Dante)
One always begins by imitating. (Eugene Delacroix)
One must not imitate the sun, one must make oneself into a sun. (Raoul Dufy)
Insist on yourself; never imitate. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Every man is a borrower and a mimic; life is theatrical and literature a quotation. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Everything must be like something, so what is this like? (E. M. Forster)
If Picasso drips, I drip... For a long while I was with Cezanne, and now I am with Picasso. (Arshile Gorky)
Imitation can acquire pretty much everything but the power which created the thing imitated. (Henry S. Haskins)
My works are an imitation of my own past and present... (Barbara Hepworth)
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. (Eric Hoffer)
The biggest inhibitor to making art is the thought that whatever you do must be completely unique. Go ahead and use those techniques you've picked up from others; the more work you do, the more your personal, distinct style will develop. (Marvin Humphrey)
Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble. (Samuel Johnson)
Often, we think that if we emulate the stars, or take a slightly different tack, we will be the ones standing in the winners' circle, loved and admired. This blinds us to the beauty and significance of our original vision and to why we became artists in the first place. (Sharon Knettell)
Find comfort in the knowledge that no imitator ever comes off as well as the original. (Ann Landers)
I remember one day when Juan Gris told me about a bunch of grapes he had seen in a painting by Picasso. The next day these grapes appeared in a painting by Gris, this time in a bowl; and the day after, the bowl appeared in a painting by Picasso. (Jacques Lipchitz)
A prudent man should always follow in the path trodden by great men and imitate those who are most excellent, so that if he does not attain to their greatness, at any rate he will get some tinge of it. (Niccolo Machiavelli)
When Picasso paints as a cubist, putting one tone next to another, the arrangement of planes is fine and the results very storng. But those who imitate him achieve nothing worthwhile. (Aristide Maillol)
A sequel is an admission that you've been reduced to imitating yourself. (Don Marquis)
The residuum of another's expression can never be related to one's own feeling. (Henri Matisse)
It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. (Herman Melville)
You might find it [my study] bears a certain relationship to Corot, but if this is so, it is not because of any attempt to imitate him on my part... I did it as conscientiously as possible and did not think of any painting whatsoever. Besides, you know that's not the way I do things. (Claude Monet)
The 'bad' gains respect through imitation; the 'good' loses it, especially in art. (Friedrich Nietzsche)
I sound like Homer. I mean Winslow Homer. (Charles Olson)
A painter may be an abandoned mimic; at school he copies his teachers, which is only right, but he copies in turn every artist in town, which is not. He may do you that honour. (Walter J. Phillips)
Why should I copy this owl, this sea urchin? Why should I try to imitate nature? I might just as well try to trace a perfect circle. (Pablo Picasso)
What does it mean for a painter to... actually imitate someone else? What's wrong with that? On the contrary, it's a good idea. You should constantly try to paint like someone else. But the thing is, you can't! (Pablo Picasso)
If what you want to do is make good art, decide what's good and try to imitate it. (Robert Pinsky)
You can imitate, but at some point, you have to start identifying who you are as a painter - the 'who am I' of the inward journey that every artist must take. (Camille Przewodek)
He who resolves never to ransack any mind but his own, will be soon reduced, from mere barrenness, to the poorest of all imitations; he will be obliged to imitate himself, and to repeat what he has before often repeated. (Sir Joshua Reynolds)
By close inspection... you will discover the manner of handling the artifices of contrast, glazing, and other expedients, by which good colorists have raised the value of their tints, and by which nature has been so happily imitated. (Sir Joshua Reynolds)
In nature everything is always right: the structure is right, the proportions are good, the colours fit the forms. If you imitate that in painting, it becomes false. (Gerhard Richter)
A mockingbird... was heard to blend the songs of 32 different kinds of birds into a 10 minute performance, a virtuoso display that served no practical purpose, falling, therefore, into the realm of pure art. (Tom Robbins)
The only good imitations are those that poke fun at bad originals. (Francois de La Rochefoucauld)
Imitation is not inspiration, and inspiration only can give birth to a work of art. The least of man's original emanations is better that the best of a borrowed thought. (Albert Pinkham Ryder)
All art is but imitation of nature. (Seneca)
It is not the how of painting but the why. To imitate a style would be a little like teaching a tone of voice or a personality. (Ben Shahn)
Don't be afraid to borrow. The great men, the most original, borrowed from everybody. (John Sloan)
Nature is commonplace. Imitation is more interesting. (Gertrude Stein)
One learns about painting by looking at and imitating other painters. (Frank Stella)
She had caprices of a marvelous unexpectedness, and how is any one to imitate a caprice? (Stendhal)
You can borrow all the flour you want but you have to bake your own bread. (Author unknown)
Do not imitate one another's style. If you do, so far as your art is concerned you will be called a grandson, rather than the son of Nature. (Leonardo da Vinci)
No one should ever imitate the style of another because, with regard to art, he will be called a nephew and not a child of nature. (Leonardo da Vinci)
The imitator is a poor kind of creature. If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this. (James Abbott McNeill Whistler)
Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life. (Oscar Wilde)
- On Writing Well...
Writing is learned by imitation. (William K. Zinsser)
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