A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes

thought originality repitition

More quotations from Oliver Wendell Holmes

Man is born a predestined idealist, for he is born to act. To act is to affirm the worth of an end, and to persist in affirming the worth of an end is to make an ideal.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes

Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes

The great thing in this world is not so much where you stand, as in what direction you are moving.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes

Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes

To be 70 years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be 40 years old.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes

More quotations tagged with “originality”

True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.

—Edith Wharton

vision originality

Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.

—George Bernard Shaw

thinking originality

How many scholars are there whose single book or article has generated more intellectual energy than the collected works of other, quantitatively far more 'productive,' scholars? The commensurating device known as the 'tape measure' may tell us that a Vermeer interior and a cow plop are both twenty inches across; there, however, the similarity ends.

—James C. Scott in Two Cheers for Anarchism

art thought work creativity originality

Beautiful things grow out of shit. Nobody ever believes that. Everyone thinks that Beethoven had his string quartets completely in his head—they somehow appeared there and formed in his head—and all he had to do was write them down and they would be manifest to the world. But what I think is so interesting, and would really be a lesson that everybody should learn, is that things come out of nothing. Things evolve out of nothing. You know, the tiniest seed in the right situation turns into the most beautiful forest. And then the most promising seed in the wrong situation turns into nothing. I think this would be important for people to understand, because it gives people confidence in their own lives to know that's how things work. If you walk around with the idea that there are some people who are so gifted—they have these wonderful things in their head but and you're not one of them, you're just sort of a normal person, you could never do anything like that—then you live a different kind of life. You could have another kind of life where you could say, well, I know that things come from nothing very much, start from unpromising beginnings, and I'm an unpromising beginning, and I could start something.

art creativity effort originality

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

—Salvador Dali

creativity originality imitation

History

4 May 2014 Added