Quotes & Sayings About Not Imitating Others

If we suffer persecution and affliction in a right manner, we attain a larger measure of conformity to Christ, by a due improvement of one of these occasions, than we could have done merely by imitating his mercy, in abundance of good works. — John Wesley

Babel is a Biblical term for Babylon. The word is Semitic; Bab means gate and El means Cod, so Babel means 'Gate of God.' But it is probably also somewhat onomatopoeic, imitating someone
who speaks in an incomprehensible tongue. The Bible is full of puns. — Neal Stephenson

I have never been convinced throughout my life that one needs to be imitating others. I even tell my daughters not to look at me as a model. — Shirin Ebadi

And Kelly was beginning to see that Sarah didn't let anything stop her, she just went and did it. This whole attitude of not letting other people stop you, of believing that you could do what you wanted, was something she found herself imitating. — Michael Crichton

I never studied art, but taught myself to draw by imitating the New Yorker cartoonists of that day, instead of doing my homework. — Bil Keane

For a hundred years, modern painters, stubbornly and in the face of incessant hostility, have moved, step by step, leaving superb monuments by the wayside, towards an art of arrangement whose expressiveness depends less and less upon its elements imitating the objects of the external world. — Robert Motherwell

I don't know what will become of this piece. Our brave critics will no doubt charge me with imitating Ravel's Bolero. Too bad - this is how I hear war. — Dmitri Shostakovich

Man's natural character is to imitate; that of the sensitive man is to resemble as closely as possible the person whom he loves. It is only by imitating the vices of others that I have earned my misfortunes. — Marquis De Sade

We all learn by imitating, as children, as students, as novices in the world of business. And then we grow up and learn to blend our innate abilities with the rules or principles we have learned. — Akio Morita

In undergraduate classes, I often see writers who are still simply imitating. I mean, we all imitate - that's how we learn to speak or write in the first place - but they're writing a Dean Koontz novel or something. — Leni Zumas

Miley is always on, she's always funny, she's always writing songs, she's always making music. The parallel of the film is like Miley says, going back to her home, going back to her roots. Getting back to Tennessee was art imitating life imitating art. — Billy Ray Cyrus

Why are corporations so fleeting? ... Instead of imitating the freewheeling city, these businesses minimize the very interactions that lead to new ideas. They erect walls and establish hierarchies. They keep people from relaxing and having insights. They stifle conversations, discourage dissent, and suffocate social networks. Rather than maximizing employee creativity they become obsessed with minor efficiencies. — Jonah Lehrer

Buddhism is all about finding your own way, not imitating the ways of others or even the ways of Buddha himself. — Brad Warner

Who would dare assign to art the sterile function of imitating nature? — Charles Baudelaire

After two takes you're imitating yourself. — Thelonious Monk

The military spirit makes you obedient, it makes you physically very disciplined; but inwardly your mind is gradually destroyed because you are imitating, following, copying. You become a mere tool of the older people, of the politician, an instrument of propaganda. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

All my life, people have made fun of the way I speak. I guess because a lot of my vocabulary is made up of things that other people say. I started making fun of them and imitating them and now that's how I speak. — Gabourey Sidibe

Contrary to the popular misconception, the actor is not necessarily a specialist in imitating or portraying what he knows about other people. On the contrary, the actor may simply be a person who's more willing than others to reveal some truths about himself. — Wallace Shawn

The original writer is not he who refrains from imitating others, but he who can be imitated by none. — Francois-Rene De Chateaubriand

Getting down on all fours and imitating a rhinoceros stops babies from crying. (Put an empty cigarette pack on your nose for a horn and make loud "snort" noises.) I don't know why parents don't do this more often. Usually it makes the kid laugh. Sometimes it sends him into shock. Either way it quiets him down. If you're a parent, acting like a rhino has another advantage. Keep it up until the kid is a teenager and he definitely won't have his friends hanging around your house all the time. — P. J. O'Rourke

Because of jealousy you are in constant suffering; you become mean to others. And because of jealousy you start becoming phony, because you start pretending. You start pretending things that you don't have, you start pretending things which you CAN'T have, which are not natural to you. You become more and more artificial. Imitating others, competing with others, what else can you do? If somebody has something and you don't have it, and you don't have a natural possibility of having it, the only way is to have some cheap substitute for it. — Rajneesh

One of the greatest paradoxes of the Black Power movement was that it talked unceasingly about not imitating the values of white society, but in advocating violence it was imitating the worst, the most brutal, and the most uncivilized value of American life. American Negroes had not been mass murderers. They had not murdered children in Sunday school, nor had they hung white men on trees bearing strange fruit. They had not been hooded perpetrators of violence, lynching human beings at will and drowning them at whim. — Martin Luther King Jr.

The key to terror, the key to terrorism, is not the act - but the fear of the act. That is why bin Laden and his deputies and his imitators are forever putting together videotaped statements and releasing virtual infomercials with dire threats and heart-stopping warnings. But why is the Republican Party imitating them? Bin Laden puts out what amounts to a commercial of fear; The Republicans put out what is unmistakable as a commercial of fear. The Republicans are paying to have the messages of bin Laden and the others broadcast into your home. — Keith Olbermann

There is much difference between imitating a good man and counterfeiting him. — Benjamin Franklin

Why is it so delusional to think that a person who feels someone else's grief or pain isn't hampered by that excess of emotion? Or that imitating others in order to fit in to the crowd is more acceptable than doing what interests you at any given moment? Why isn't it considered rude to look a total stranger in the eye when you first meet him, or to invade his personal space by shaking hands? Couldn't it be considered a flaw to veer off topic based on a comment someone else makes instead of sticking to your original subject? Or to be oblivious when something in your environment changes - like a piece of clothing that gets moved from a drawer to a closet?" That — Jodi Picoult

I try to not listen to all the girls I admire musically - like Nina Simone - just so I don't find myself imitating them, even if it's subconsciously. — Lou Doillon

After some time passed in studying - and even imitating - the works of others, I would recommend the student to endeavour to be original, and to remember that originality should not be undiscovered plagiarism. — Henry Peach Robinson

The challenge of manners is not so much to be nice to someone whose favor and/or person you covet (although more people need to be reminded of that necessity than one would suppose) as to be exposed to the bad manners of others without imitating them. — Judith Martin

I had started by imitating a parrot, which is unusual, in that a parrot is supposed to imitate you. By taking the initiative you allow the parrot no alternative but to be itself, which proves again that attack is often the best defence. — Peter Ustinov

Mimicry, they argue, is also one of the means by which we infect each other with our emotions. In other words, if I smile and you see me and smile in response - even a microsmile that takes no more than several milliseconds - it's not just you imitating or empathizing with me. It may also be a way that I can pass on my happiness to you. — Malcolm Gladwell

Jesus was clear that following Him meant - get this - following Him. The church has put so much effort into inventing a new form of "following Christ" that doesn't require imitating Him. We teach that even though Jesus allowed His rights to be trampled, we should fight for ours. We teach that even though Jesus lived simply, we have the right to live luxuriously (some prefer the term "comfortably"). Even as we teach that Jesus was rejected by the world, we pursue popularity. — Francis Chan

The straight line is godless and immoral. The straight line is not a creative line, it is a duplicating line, an imitating line. — Friedensreich Hundertwasser

Abstraction in photography is ridiculous, and is only an imitation of painting. We stopped imitating painters a hundred years ago, so to imitate them in this day and age is laughable. — Berenice Abbott

If some men do not choose to think, but survive by imitating and repeating, like trained animals, the routine of sounds and motions they learned from others, never making an effort to understand their own work, it still remains true that their survival is made possible only by those who did choose to think and to discover the motions they are repeating. The survival of such mental parasites depend on blind chance; their unfocused minds are unable to know whom to imitate, whose motions it is safe to follow. They are the men who march into the abyss, trailing after any destroyer who promises them to assume the responsibility they evade: the responsibility of being conscious. — Ayn Rand

We have three ways to act wisely. First by thinking. That's the noblest. Second by imitating. That's the easiest. And third by experience. This is the bitterest. — Anonymous

I know a man who is in love with my friend. He loves her absolutely.
The only thing he wants in return is for her to love him."
Saiman arched his eyebrows, imitating me. "And?"
"You're the exact opposite of him. You lack the capacity to love, so you want to smother mine as well. — Ilona Andrews

I repeat: there was no attraction for me in imitating human beings; I imitated them because I needed a way out, and for no other reason. — Franz Kafka

A sense of peace and contentment filled him. He loved music, and he loved to dance. Teaching Tess to waltz was going to be a pleasure.
A half an hour later, he had revised his opinion drastically, as she stepped on his foot again. Instantly, they both stopped moving and glared at each other.
"Young lady, you are not an elephant," he told her. "Kindly refrain from imitating one. — Thea Harrison

The lives of many reflect the practices and standards of this present world ... they are more interested in imitating the world system dominated by Satan than in imitating Christ. — Billy Graham

The hatred of the West and of everything that it represents arises not because its spirit is really foreign to the peoples of the third world, nor because they are really opposed to the "progress" that we embody, but because the competitive spirit is as familiar to them as it is to ourselves. Far from turning away from the West, they cannot prevent themselves from imitating it, from adopting its values without admitting it to themselves. They are no less consumed than we are by the ideology of individual and collective success. — Rene Girard

God is the original, master forgiver. Each time we grope our reluctant way through the minor miracle of forgiving, we are imitating his style. I am not at all sure that any of us would have had imagination enough to see the possibilities in this way to heal the wrongs of this life had he not done it first. — Lewis B. Smedes

First of all, I think that sex, like love, is a sacred thing..if I were going to live beyond puberty, it would be really important to me to keep sex as a sort of marvelous sacrament. And secondly, a teenager who pretends to be an adult is still a teenager. If you imagine that getting high at a party and sleeping around is going to propel you into a state of full adulthood, that's like thinking that dressing up as an Indian is going to make you an Indian. And thirdly, it's a really weird way of looking at life to want to become an adult by imitating everything that is most catastrophic about adulthood. — Muriel Barbery

If I thought that any poem of mine could have been written by anyone else, either a contemporary or a forerunner, I should suppress it with a blush; and I should do the same if I ever found I were imitating myself. Every poem should be new, unexpected, inimitable, and incapable of being parodied. — Robert Graves

It's not imitating anything; it has become a better version of itself. — Brandon Sanderson

Every age might perhaps produce one or two geniuses, if they were not sunk under the censure and obloquy of plodding, servile, imitating pedants. — Jonathan Swift

You should not have any special fondness for a particular weapon, or anything else, for that matter. Too much is the same as not enough. Without imitating anyone else, you should have as much weaponry as suits you. — Miyamoto Musashi

The verb 'to darn' is explained in my pocket dictionary as follows: 'To mend by imitating the texture of the stuff, with thread and needle.' But this definition does not correspond to the work accomplished by good Chinese housewives. When they mend a sock, they do not try 'to imitate the texture of the stuff'. Their art makes no attempt at concealment: it even takes a certain pride in revealing itself. — Daniele Vare

The female covers her breasts, and then proceeds to redefine their shape with a brassiere. This sexual signaling device may be padded or inflatable, so that it not only reinstates the concealed shape, but also enlarges it, imitating in this way the breast swelling that occurs during sexual arousal. — Desmond Morris