Sometimes it’s flattering when people copy you, but sometimes it gets to a breaking point.

If you keep proving stuff that others have done, getting confidence, increasing the complexities of your solutions – for the fun of it – then one day you’ll turn around and discover that nobody actually did that one!

When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike.

There’s no formula.

Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them.

There have been many great men that have flattered the people who ne’er loved them.

Originality is really important.

Every band I’ve worked with also wants to be countercultural in the sense that they want to feel that they’ve gone somewhere that nobody else has been.

He that loves to be flattered is worthy o‘ the flatterer.

A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man. His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example.

Life doesn’t imitate art, it imitates bad television.

When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it’s a sure sign you’re getting old.

In everything truth surpasses the imitation and copy.

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

Sometimes you have the trends that’s not that cool. You may have certain artists portraying these trends and don’t really have that lifestyle, and then it gives off the wrong thing. And it becomes kinda corny after awhile. It’s really about keeping hip-hop original and pushing away the corniness in it.

People ask me where I got my singing style. I didn’t copy my style from anybody.

Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.

Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.

In business or in life, don’t follow the wagon tracks too closely.

Everyone likes flattery; and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.

When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

Faith, there hath been many great men that have flattered the people who ne’er loved them.

I get that racism exists, but it’s not a catalyst for my content. I don’t need to talk about race to have material. My style of comedy is more self-deprecating. I think that makes me more relatable. When you deal with ‚topics‘ – race, white versus black – you’re not separating from the pack. You’re doing what everybody else is doing.

In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.

I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.

I’ve always felt that what I have going for me is not my imagination, because everyone has an imagination. What I have is a relentlessly controlled imagination. What looks like wild invention is actually quite carefully calculated.

There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man’s self.

All the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.

Cinema reflects culture and there is no harm in adapting technology, but not at the cost of losing your originality.

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.

The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence.

The poet, being an imitator like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects – things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. The vehicle of expression is language – either current terms or, it may be, rare words or metaphors.

How lucky Adam was. He knew when he said a good thing, nobody had said it before.

Although a skillful flatterer is a most delightful companion if you have him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people.

Do something wonderful, people may imitate it.

From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality.

To refrain from imitation is the best revenge.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

Japan’s very interesting. Some people think it copies things. I don’t think that anymore. I think what they do is reinvent things. They will get something that’s already been invented and study it until they thoroughly understand it. In some cases, they understand it better than the original inventor.

The bad gains respect through imitation, the good loses it especially in art.

I’ve got a great sense of humor, and if I’m able to say or do something in a movie that people feel like they want to repeat, that’s hugely flattering.

Every man is a creative cause of what happens, a primum mobile with an original movement.

No man was ever great by imitation.

Knavery and flattery are blood relations.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it ‚the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.‘ The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of ‚Artist.‘

We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.

Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.

It is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.

I never wanted to look pretty on stage and sing about something we’ve all heard about before.

It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry ‚I could have thought of that‘ is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn’t, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too.

It is better to imitate ancient than modern work.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

The false is nothing but an imitation of the true.

My kind of composing is more like the work of a gardener. The gardener takes his seeds and scatters them, knowing what he is planting but not quite what will grow where and when – and he won’t necessarily be able to reproduce it again afterwards either.

I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent.

The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.

None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.