Quotes about Imitation

They are like those sacred cows in India which, I am told, eat up all the printed paper they can find in the streets... Yes, they gobble up all the printed pages from books that have been written centuries ago, but they do not digest them. They no longer think for themselves; they read and repeat, read and repeat - and the students who listen to them learn only to read and repeat, generation after generation. ...on the whole, Al-Azhar has lapsed into the sterility from which the whole Muslim world is suffering... If there is to be any change for the better, thinking must be encouraged instead of the present thought-imitation...

~ Shaykh Mustafa al-Maraghi, Quoted by Muhammad Asad in The Road To Mecca

Men nearly always follow the tracks made by others and proceed in their affairs by imitation, even though they cannot entirely keep to the tracks of others or emulate the prowess of their models. So a prudent man should always follow in the footsteps of great men and imitate those who have been outstanding.

Expressions of replica...

Consideration of periphery as existent...

Contemplation of imitation as authentic...

Fear of exposure...

Merely a likeness of you...

for your reflection remains hidden

Trust the manifestation .....

it is your inner self ...

evident at it's core

The only kind of person I would like to be is the kind of person who likes to be me.

Envy is ignorance. Imitation is suicide.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our English dead! In peace there's nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility; But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger: Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood.

In peace there's nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility: But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger; Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage; Then lend the eye a terrible aspect; . . . . Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide, Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.

In peace there's nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility: But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger; Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood. . . .

What more delightsome than an infinite varietie of sweet smelling flowers? decking with sundry colours the greene mantle of the Earth, the universall Mother of us all, so by them bespotted, so dyed, that all the world cannot sample them, and wherein it is more fit to admire the Dyer, than imitate his workemanship. Colouring not onely the earth, but decking the ayre, and sweetning every breath and spirit.

Swift has sailed into his rest; Savage indignation there Cannot lacerate his breast Imitate him if you dare, World-besotted traveler; he Served human liberty.

I had still the ambition, formed in Sligo in my teens, of living in imitation of Thoreau on Innisfree, a little island in Lough Gill, and when walking through Fleet Street very homesick I heard a little tinkle of water and saw a fountain in a shop window which balanced a little ball upon its jet, and began to remember lake water. From the sudden remembrance came my poem Innisfree.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another. The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbor's, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

Let every Christian be a gardener so that he and she and the whole of creation, which groans in expectation of the Spirit's final harvest, may inherit Paradise. If we Christian's truly treasure the hope that one day we, like Adam and the penitent thief, will walk alongside the One who caused even the dead wood of the Cross to blossom with flowers, then we must also imitate the Master's art and make the desolate earth grow green.

Always imitate the behavior of the winners when you lose.

It distresses parents when children who should obey them, instead imitate them.

When we live habitually with the wicked, we become either their victim or their disciple; when we associate, with the virtuous men, we form ourselves in imitation of virtues, or at least some of their faults.

What are imitation rhinestones?

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.

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.

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

The Lord called me by the way of simplicity and humility, and this way He hath shown me in truth for me and those who will believe and imitate me. And therefore I would that ye name not to me any rule, neither of St. Augustine, nor St. Benedict, nor of Bernard, nor any way or form of living, but that which was mercifully shown and given me by the Lord.

Art imitates Nature, and necessity is the mother of invention.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

Insist on yourself; never imitate.

Imitation is suicide.

Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.

A prince being thus obliged to know well how to act as a beast must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.

Good painters imitate nature, bad ones spew it up.

To refrain from imitation is the best revenge.

No form of Nature is inferior to Art; for the arts merely imitate natural forms.