Imitation Quotes - Page 9

• Conformity is an imitation of grace.

  Simone Weil

  Grace, Conformity

  Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.167, Psychology Press

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• Solving problems is a practical skill like, let us say, swimming. We acquire any practical skill by imitation and practice. Trying to swim, you imitate what other people do with their hands and feet to keep their heads above water, and, finally, you learn to swim by practicing swimming. Trying to solve problems, you have to observe and to imitate what other people do when solving problems, and, finally, you learn to do problems by doing them.

  George Polya

  Education, Math, Swimming

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• Ignorance and a narrow education lay the foundation of vice, and imitation and custom rear it up.

  Mary Astell

  Ignorance, Vices, Foundation

  Mary Astell (2002). “A Serious Proposal to the Ladies”, p.67, Broadview Press

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• When you do an interview with me, you're talking to a cheap imitation of the person that I really am. There's no magic in my words, it's just me talking.

  John Mayer

  Talking, Magic, Interviews

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• Art creates an incomparable and unique effect, and, having done so, passes on to other things. Nature, upon the other hand, forgetting that that imitation can be made the sincerest form of insult, keeps on repeating this effect until we all become absolutely wearied of it.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Unique, Hands

  Oscar Wilde (1997). “Collected Works of Oscar Wilde: The Plays, the Poems, the Stories and the Essays Including De Profundis”, p.937, Wordsworth Editions

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• I am now to offer some thoughts upon that sameness or familiarity which we frequently find between passages in different authors without quotation. This may be one of three things either what is called Plagiarism, or Imitation, or Coincidence.

  James Boswell

  Different, Three, May

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• In the aftermath of the recent wave action in the Indian Ocean, even the archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williamson [sic], proved himself a latter-day Voltairean by whimpering that he could see how this might shake belief in a friendly creator. Williamson is of course a notorious fool, who does an almost perfect imitation of a bleating and frightened sheep, but even so, one is forced to rub one's eyes in astonishment. Is it possible that a grown man could live so long and still have his personal composure, not to mention his lifetime job description, upset by a large ripple of seawater?

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Jobs, Ocean

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• Unfortunately what came out of it was also kind of an imitation community with a lot of mindless conformity.

  Bill Griffith

  Community, Conformity, Kind

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• My readers, who may at first be apt to consider Quotation as downright pedantry, will be surprised when I assure them, that next to the simple imitation of sounds and gestures, Quotation is the most natural and most frequent habitude of human nature. For, Quotation must not be confined to passages adduced out of authors. He who cites the opinion, or remark, or saying of another, whether it has been written or spoken, is certainly one who quotes; and this we shall find to be universally practiced.

  James Boswell

  Simple, Next, Firsts

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• There are three ways of learning golf: by study, which is the most wearisome; by imitation, which is the most fallacious; and by experience, which is the most bitter.

  Robert Browning

  Golf, Three, Way

  Robert Browning (1985). “A History of Golf”

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• A Fox entered the house of an actor and, rummaging through all his properties, came upon a Mask, an admirable imitation of a human head. He placed his paws on it and said, "What a beautiful head! Yet it is of no value, as it entirely lacks brains."

  Aesop

  Beautiful, House, Brain

  Aesop (2013). “Aesop's Fables (Illustrated & Annotated Edition)”, p.14, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Using a camera appeases the anxiety which the work-driven feel about not working when they are on vacation and supposed to be having fun. They have something to do that is like a friendly imitation of work: they can take pictures.

  Susan Sontag

  Travel, Fun, Vacation

  Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.11, Macmillan

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• Whoever wants to set a good example must add a grain of foolishness to his virtue: then others can imitate and yet at the same time surpass the one they imitate-which human beings love to do.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Example, Add, Want

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• The only good copies are those which make us see the absurdity of bad originals.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Absurdity, Copies, Originals

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• Everyone alters and is altered by everyone else. We are all the time taking in portions of one another or else reacting against them, and by these involuntary acquisitions and repulsions modifying our natures.

  Gerald Brenan

  Time, Acquisition, Reacting

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• We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. 'Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like 'gene'. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to 'memory', or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream'.

  Richard Dawkins

  Memories, Science, Names

  Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition”, p.249, Oxford University Press

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• All art is an imitation of nature.

  Seneca the Elder

  Art, Nature, Art Is

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• No writer can be fully convicted of imitation except there is a concurrence of more resemblance than can be imagined to have happened by chance; as where the same ideas are conjoined without any natural series or necessary coherence, or where not only the thought but the words are copied.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Ideas, Coherence

  Samuel Johnson (1825). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With Murphy's Essay”, p.106

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• "Nationwide" featured an amazing collection of apprentice impersonators. From all over Britain, schoolchildren materialised via local studios to give us their imitations of the mighty. There were at least three uncannily accurate Margaret Thatchers, their eyelids fatigued with condescension and their voices swooping and whining like dive-bombers.

  Clive James

  Voice, America, Giving

  Clive James (2015). “The Crystal Bucket”, p.76, Pan Macmillan

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• What goes on in abstract art is the proclaiming of aesthetic principles... It is in our own time that we have become aware of pure aesthetic considerations. Art never can be imitation.

  Hans Hofmann

  Art, Principles, Goes On

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• Together, the property rights and public choice schools show only that, if you start by assuming a purely individualistic model of human behavior and treat politics as if it were a pale imitation of the market, democracy will, indeed, make no sense.

  Paul Starr

  School, Rights, Choices

  "The Meaning Of Privatization". Yale Law & Policy Review, Volume 6, 1988.

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• I'm a very big Notorious B.I.G. fan and I do an imitation of him that always cracks everybody up.

  Gene Ween

  Fans, Cracks, Notorious

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• It strikes me that mathematical writing is similar to using a language. To be understood you have to follow some grammatical rules. However, in our case, nobody has taken the trouble of writing down the grammar; we get it as a baby does from parents, by imitation of others. Some mathematicians have a good ear; some not (and some prefer the slangy expressions such as 'iff'). That's life.

  Jean-Pierre Serre

  Baby, Taken, Writing

  "Some Hints on Mathematical Style". Letter to David Goss, August 2016.

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• Almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created. The average conservative is a slave to the most incidental and trivial part of his forefathers glory - to the archaic formula which happened to express their genius or the eighteenth-century contrivance by which for a time it was served.

  Walter Lippmann

  Average, Genius, Machines

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• Tradition implies authority, conformity, imitation, following.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Life, Conformity, Tradition

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