To do nothing is in everyone's power.

The authour who imitates his predecessors only by furnishing himself with thoughts and elegances out of the same general magazine of literature, can with…

— Samuel Johnson

No writer can be fully convicted of imitation except there is a concurrence of more resemblance than can be imagined to have happened by…

— Samuel Johnson

From thee, great God, we spring, to thee we tend,- Path, motive, guide, original, and end.

— Samuel Johnson

To exact of every man who writes that he should say something new, would be to reduce authors to a small number; to oblige…

— Samuel Johnson

Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last.

— Samuel Johnson

The task of an author is, either to teach what is not known, or to recommend known truths by his manner of adorning them;…

— Samuel Johnson

DECIDE, v.i. To succumb to the preponderance of one set of influences over another set.

— Ambrose Bierce

... a fellow can't predict what he will pick up in the form of influence.

— Saul Bellow

“Create with the heart; build with the mind.”

— Criss Jami

Original minds are not distinguished by being the first to see a new thing, but instead by seeing the old, familiar thing that is…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Having to be different is the same trap as having to be the same.

— Robert Rauschenberg

Writing that flirts with incoherence can just as readily flounder as writing characterized by simplicity and composure. There is no reliable formula for originality,…

— Joanna Scott

Our originality shows itself most strikingly not in what we wholly originate but in what we do with that which we borrow from others.

— Eric Hoffer

“Desert are you, deluge are you, in a crowd of fakes, only truth is you.”

— Abhijit Naskar

If you want to be average, do what others do. If you want to be awesome, do what no one does.

— Alexander Den Heijer