Imitation Quotes - Page 15

• Truth does not do as much good in the world as its imitations do harm.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Doe, World, Harm

  5 Copy quote

• Nothing is good for a nation but that which arises from its own core and its own general wants, without apish imitation of another.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Want, Arise, Nations

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann (2014). “Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann”, p.75, Ravenio Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The art of reasoning becomes of first importance. In this line antiquity has left us the finest models for imitation; I should consider the speeches of Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus, as pre-eminent specimens of logic, taste, and that sententious brevity which, using not a word to spare, leaves not a moment for inattention to the hearer. Amplification is the vice of modern oratory.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Art, Taste, Firsts

  "The Writings of Thomas Jefferson". Book by Thomas Jefferson, p. 30, 1904.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Imitation is criticism.

  William Blake

  Criticism, Artistic

  William Blake (1966). “Complete Writings: With Variant Readings”, p.453, Oxford University Press, USA

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Those graces which from their presumed facility encourage all to attempt an imitation of them, are usually the most inimitable.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Grace, Facility

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.261

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble.

  George Orwell

  Clarity, Trouble, Modern

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.157, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The free system of government we have established is so congenial with reason, with common sense, and with a universal feeling, that it must produce approbation and a desire of imitation, as avenues may be found for truth to the knowledge of nations.

  James Madison

  Government, Common Sense, Feelings

  Letter to Pierre-Étienne du Ponceau (James Madison papers, Library of Congress), January 23, 1826.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Glamour, that trans-human aura or power to attract imitation, is a kind of vessel into which dreams are poured, and some vessels are simply worthier than others... A beautiful woman can turn heads but real glamour has a deeper pull... Glamour is the power to rearrange people's emotions, which, in effect, is the power to control one's environment.

  Arthur Miller

  Beautiful, Dream, Fashion

  11 Copy quote

• The Cube is an imitation of life itself - or even an improvement on life.

  Erno Rubik

  Cubes, Improvement, Imitation Of Life

  43 Copy quote

• It is clear that all verbal structures with meaning are verbal imitations of that elusive psychological and physiological process known as thought, a process stumbling through emotional entanglements, sudden irrational convictions, involuntary gleams of insight, rationalized prejudices, and blocks of panic and inertia, finally to reach a completely incommunicable intuition.

  Northrop Frye

  Block, Emotional, Thinking

  Northrop Frye (2015). “Anatomy of Criticism”, p.83, Princeton University Press

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The contemporary hero, the mythical pattern in the imitation of whom we would live, remains as yet undefined. We have no hero; what is more to the point, we suspect hero worship.

  Irwin Edman

  Hero, Patterns, Worship

  7 Copy quote

• I believe I am looking for rightness. My work has so much to do with reality that I wanted to have a corresponding rightness. That excludes painting in imitation. 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

  Art, Believe, Reality

  Gerhard Richter, Dietmar Elger, Hans-Ulrich Obrist (2009). “Gerhard Richter: text : writings, interviews and letters, 1961-2007”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The heroes of the present will retreat to the imitation they are anyhow.

  Charles Olson

  Hero, Retreat

  Charles Olson (1979). “Muthologos: the collected lectures & interviews”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

  Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

  Humor, Comedian, Actors

  8 Copy quote

• When I was 13, listening to Choice FM, I would listen to a lot of R&B from America, and whenever a British person tried to do it, it didn't really work, they just sounded like they were trying to copy that whole style. Now the music sounds British, something real rather than an imitation.

  Katy B

  Real, America, Choices

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Imitation is flattery, and The Hills Have Eyes is a classic.

  Michael Berryman

  Eye, Classic, Flattery

  14 Copy quote

• Going to a grammar school, you mixed with all sorts of different types and I used to listen to how they talked. When I did my imitations, I could sound like someone really rough, or I could sound like a cabinet minister.

  Steve Coogan

  School, Sound, Different

  7 Copy quote

• This imitation Elvis may not be the king, but baby I'm the next best thing.

  Jimmy Buffett

  Baby, Kings, May

  Song: Elvis Imitators

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If we think we are usually good, then God is usually irrelevant... Such thinking ignores the depths of sin in my own heart, and, in essence, it elevates me so that I am just a mildly flawed imitation of God rather than someone completely dependent on Him.

  Edward T Welch

  Heart, Thinking, Essence

  32 Copy quote

• Satan is not fighting churches; he is joining them. He does more harm by sowing tares than by pulling up wheat. He accomplishes more by imitation than by outright opposition.

  Vance Havner

  Christian, Fighting, Church

  Vance Havner (1973). “Three-Score & Ten”, Fleming H. Revell Company

  131 Copy quote

  Show source

• Britain is producing some of the worst films in the world. Our film industry is desperate to be part of America, and we just churn out flaccid imitations of bad films over there.

  Catherine McCormack

  America, World, Film

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Neighborhood is a word that has come to sound like a Valentine. As a sentimental concept, 'neighborhood' is harmful to city planning. It leads to attempts at warping city life into imitations of town or suburban life. Sentimentality plays with sweet intentions in place of good sense.

  Jane Jacobs

  Sweet, Valentine, Play

  Jane Jacobs (2016). “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”, p.112, Vintage

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• Art only begins where Imitation ends.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Ends

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: De profundis, "Epistola : in carcere et vinculis"”, p.126, Oxford University Press on Demand

  68 Copy quote

  Show source

• The result is ... that there's no room left in the world for the weird – though plenty for crude, contemptuous, wisecracking, fun-poking imitations of it.

  Fritz Leiber

  Fun, World, Rooms

  Fritz Leiber, H. P. Lovecraft (2004). “Fritz Leiber and H.P. Lovecraft: Writers of the Dark”, p.202, Wildside Press LLC

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• Look at your [English] ladies of quality are they not forever parting with their husbands - forfeiting their reputations - and is their life aught but dissipation? In common genteel life, indeed, you may now and then meet with very fine girls - who have politeness, sense and conversation - but these are few - and then look at your trademen's daughters - what are they? poor creatures indeed! all pertness, imitation and folly.

  Fanny Burney

  Girl, Daughter, Husband

  "The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney". Vol. 1, p. 47, journal entry, November 17, 1768.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source