- WIST is my personal collection of quotations, curated for thought, amusement, turn of phrase, historical significance, or sometimes just (often-unintentional) irony. Please feel free to browse and borrow.
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Adams, John • Bacon, Francis • Bible • Bierce, Ambrose • Billings, Josh • Butcher, Jim • Chesterton, Gilbert Keith • Churchill, Winston • Einstein, Albert • Eisenhower, Dwight David • Emerson, Ralph Waldo • Franklin, Benjamin • Fuller, Thomas (1654) • Gaiman, Neil • Galbraith, John Kenneth • Gandhi, Mohandas • Goethe, Johann von • Hazlitt, William • Heinlein, Robert A. • Hoffer, Eric • Huxley, Aldous • Ingersoll, Robert Green • James, William • Jefferson, Thomas • Johnson, Lyndon • Johnson, Samuel • Kennedy, John F. • King, Martin Luther • La Rochefoucauld, Francois • Lewis, C.S. • Lincoln, Abraham • Mencken, H.L. • Orwell, George • Pratchett, Terry • Roosevelt, Eleanor • Roosevelt, Theodore • Russell, Bertrand • Seneca the Younger • Shakespeare, William • Shaw, George Bernard • Stevenson, Adlai • Stevenson, Robert Louis • Twain, Mark • Watterson, Bill • Wilde, Oscar- Only the 45 most quoted authors are shown above. Full author list.
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Quotations about imitation
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
How do you expect to arrive at the end of your own journey if you take the road to another man’s city? How do you expect to reach your own perfection by leading somebody else’s life?
Thomas Merton (1915-1968) French-American religious and writer [a.k.a. Fr. M. Louis]
New Seeds of Contemplation, ch. 14 “Integrity” (1962)
(Source)
For, where God built a church, there the devil would also build a chapel.
Imitation is the sincerest form of television.
Fred Allen (1894-1956) American humorist [b. John Florence Sullivan]
(Attributed)
Sometimes attributed to Steve Allen.
To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation.
Georg C. Lichtenberg (1742-1799) German physicist, writer
Aphorisms (1775-79) [tr. Mautner and Hatfield]
Children will imitate their fathers in their vices, seldom in their repentance.
Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892) British Baptist preacher, author [Charles Haddon (C.H.) Spurgeon]
Spurgeon’s Sermons, 3rd Series, Sermon 21, “Manasseh” (1883)
(Source)
Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our fathers have done them or our neighbors do them, and the same is true of a larger part than what we suspect of what we think.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935) American jurist, Supreme Court Justice
“The Path of the Law,” speech, Boston University School of Law on (8 Jan 1897)
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) American-British poet, critic, playwright [Thomas Stearns Eliot]
“Philip Massinger,” The Sacred Wood (1920)
FLUELLEN: If the enemy is an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb, is it meet, think you, that we should also, look you, be an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb, in your own conscience now?
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Henry V, Act 4, sc. 1 (1598-99)
Teenagers can be idiotic and stupid, but teenagers also model their behavior from the signals they get from adults.
John Scalzi (b. 1969) American writer
The Last Colony, ch. 4 (2007)
Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and insensibly approximate to the characters we most admire. In this way, a generous habit of thought and of action carries with it an incalculable influence.
Christian Nestell Bovee (1820-1904) American epigrammist
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought, Vol. 1 (1862)
At all events, the next best thing to being witty one’s self, is to be able to quote another’s wit.
Christian Nestell Bovee (1820-1904) American epigrammist
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought, Vol. 2 (1862)
No sooner is a temple built to God, but the Devil builds a chapel hard by.
George Herbert (1593-1633) Welsh priest, orator, poet.
Jacula Prudentum (1651)
(Source)
See also Martin Luther.
