Imitating Quotes

On the other hand, if surrounded by ignorance, coarseness, and selfishness, they will unconsciously assume the same character, and grow up to adult years rude, uncultivated, and all the more dangerous to society if placed amidst the manifold temptations of what is called civilised life. "Give your child to be educated by a slave," said an ancient Greek, "and instead of one slave, you will then have two." The child cannot help imitating what he sees. Everything is to him a model - of manner, of gesture, of speech, of habit, of character. "For the child," says Richter, "the most important era of life is that of childhood, when he begins to colour and mould himself by companionship with others. ~ Samuel Smiles

Sonnets are guys writing in English, imitating an Italian song form. It was a form definitely sung as often as it was recited. ~ Steve Earle

to always say yes to finding and imitating exceptional models, to say yes to working for world peace, to say yes to living in simplicity, to say yes to taking the time to listen, to say yes to committing acts of kindness, to say yes to staying foolish and hungry, to understand that it's okay to occasionally make a mess of things, to say yes to taking action, and, more importantly, to go forth and make your life a story that inspires others. ~ Jill Cooper

This approach has enabled Japanese firms to achieve such production efficiency and quality that now many non-Japanese companies are imitating them. By not assuming the worst about their workers, the Japanese companies have got the best out of them. ~ Ha-Joon Chang

The true smoker abstains from imitating Vesuvius. ~ Auguste-Marseille Barthelemy

(Imitating a Belarus citizen commenting on their national flag) Stupid National Anthem ... Look at this flag; Two bears fighting over a pineapple. What kind of message does that send to the world? Come to Belarus, where wild animals will steal your fruit ~ Bill Bailey

As to the rest, I am no more guilty of imitating 'real life' than'real life' is responsible for plagiarizing me. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley

I am really very grateful for this Award. It is one of the first given to a woman, and to two women at that. When I first started getting work published, I used to have wistful thoughts at the way all important awards were given to men. Women, I used to think, could be as innovative, imaginative and productive as possible - and women were the ones mostly at work in the field of fantasy for children and young adults - but only let a man enter the field, and people instantly regarded what he had to say and what he did as more Important. He got respectful reviews as well as awards, even if what he was doing - which it often was - was imitating the women. But you have changed all that.
Thank you for being so enlightened.
Women, large-minded, formidable women, have played an almost exclusive part in helping my career. I have hardly ever dealt with a man - at least, when it came to publishing: ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Acting and performing music is exactly the same. Therefore, an actor, for instance, who is very impressive, he's not simply imitating or trying to imitate, but he must dominate this kind of feeling, and then he transmits it in a much stronger way. ~ Pierre Boulez

The more time we invest imitating others, the less that's available to discover and be ourselves. ~ LZ Granderson

Anger ignites fires or do fires ignite anger? Did the dispossessed, their rage burning within them for years, finally strike a match to enlighten an oblivious region of their dissatisfaction? Or were the fires the primary cause of the dissatisfaction, inciting through its searing heat, the fury which is colouring the country a bright crimson, as its people imitating the violence of the flames spill the blood of thousands? ~ Jinat Rehana Begum

and I again turned through the magazine's first few pages, past the Guess Jeans ads and Eternity by Calvin Klein ads and pitches for Crisca clothes, filled with beautiful people imitating suffering; and then words came to me, words arrived in my mind, quickly and insistently, words representing the real sound of my feeling: The shot has been lost; the experiment has not been worth it; the species does not deserve to continue; it is much too late ...; I took a single step, and suddenly wanted to weep: ~ Evan Dara

In nature the only source of energy is from the sun. So in ecological systems everything comes from the sun through the process of photosynthesis whereas now in human built environment our source of energy is from fossil fuels, renewable, wood energy or hydro-energy but it is not from the sun. So until we are able to operate and run a human built environment by imitating photosynthesis it will be a long while before we can have a true eco-system. ~ Ken Yeang

Considering thus how much honor is awarded to antiquity, and how many times - letting pass infinite other examples - a fragment of an ancient statue has been bought at high price because someone wants to have it near oneself, to honor his house with it, and to be able to have it imitated by those who delight in that art, and how the latter then strive with all industry to represent it in all their works; and seeing, on the other hand, that the most virtuous works the histories show us, which have been done by ancient kingdoms and republics, by kings, captains, citizens, legislators, and others who have labored for their fatherland, are rather admired than imitated - indeed they are so much shunned by everyone in every least thing that no sign of that ancient virtue remains with us - I can do no other than marvel and grieve… From this it arises that the infinite number who read [the histories] take pleasure in hearing of the variety of accidents contained within them without thinking of imitating them, judging that imitation is not only difficult but impossible - as if heaven, sun, elements, men had varied in motion, order, and power from what they were in antiquity. Wishing, therefore, to turn men from this error, I have judged it necessary to write on all those books of Titus Livy... ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

LET US STOP IMITATING!!! Piracy and imitations of designs hamper the development and expansion of export trade. It is regrettable that there are quite a few cases of piracy in the People's Republic. Piracy injures the Chinese people's international prestige, causes the boycott of Chinese goods, and makes Chinese designers lose interest in making creative efforts. ~ Richard Condon

Man is an idiot. He doesn't know how to do anything without copying, without imitating, without plagiarizing, without aping. It might even have been that man invented generation by coitus after seeing the grasshopper copulate. ~ Augusto Roa Bastos

American society in recent years has been imitating behavior patterns that have produced negative - and sometimes catastrophic - consequences in many other countries around the world. ~ Thomas Sowell

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

If you find yourself imitating another writer, that doesn't have to be a bad thing, especially if you are a young or a new writer. However, you should be conscious of exactly how you are imitating him - word choice, sentence structure, motifs? - and think about why you're doing it. ~ Poppy Z. Brite

When we appeal to the throne of grace we do so through Mary, honoring God by honoring His Mother, imitating Him by exalting her, touching the most responsive chord in the sacred heart of Christ with the sweet name of Mary. ~ Robert Bellarmine

My parents had a pub and each Sunday there was an accordionist. They have told me that when I was in my cradle, I already was imitating the gestures of the musician. ~ Toots Thielemans

The dog can only become what's in your bubble. The dog is imitating the energy that is in your bubble. You are the source, the feast of energy. If you feel anxious, the dog becomes anxious with you. If you become nervous, the dog wakes up nervous with you. ~ Cesar Millan

Whenever we show others the goodness of God, whenever we follow our Teacher by imitating His posture of humble and ready service, our actions are sacred and ministerial. To be called into the priesthood, as all of us are, is to be called to a life of presence, of kindness. ~ Rachel Held Evans

Imitating someone is the mediocre way of getting humanity back to what we evolved from. ~ Shubham Choudhary

Smoke-ccss-b85b07: Tell me about a time when you did something evil. ABlum: oh gee well sometimes i work too hard is that evil? Smoke-ccssb85b07: Sarcasm ignored. ABlum: ok um when i started college, my brother raph pressured me to join the ut austin chapter of his fraternity and i joined, only to discover that fraternities are the stupidest forms of social organization ever invented so, live and learn but at the end of the fall semester, one of my frat brothers offered to pay me to write his final history paper and i did it but i didn't want to get caught, so i read his earlier papers and put a lot of work into imitating his shitty writing which made the paper a d+ at best so he failed the class and i wouldn't give the money back so they made up an honor code violation and kicked me out of the frat and at the time i remember thinking "this has worked out surprisingly well" so, i don't know what you consider "evil" but i'm sure you can find it somewhere in there ~ Leonard Richardson

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

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

Mom calls me Patch-a-roo and Patch-a-roo-ny. She usually croons these names to me or crows them as if she's imitating the rooster. I know this is a little odd, but I'm a really special dog. Of course, sometimes she calls me Stink-a-roo. ~ Lea Beall

Everyone is so preoccupied by youth. People talk about how the movie business is a microcosm of the bigger picture, or life imitating art, but the business is guilty for getting women out of the way. ~ Sam Elliott

You'll soon run through the whole of the seven dwarfs. You start dating and it'll be Bashful and Happy you're imitating. Then you start fucking the guy and you'll turn into Sleepy. Then it's just a matter of time before you have a fight and it'll be Grumpy. Then the relationship will be all over and you'll be wiser at the end of it
all, just like Doc."
I shook my head at his convoluted thinking. "What about poor Sneezy?"
Charlie looked at me like I was dumb. "It was an analogy, dude! Work with me here. No analogy is perfect. Just like you're no Snow White and the poor guy you're mooning over is no Prince Charming. ~ Renae Kaye

There wasn't a cloud in the sky, no wind, and everything was quiet around us - all we could hear were birds chirping in the woods. The war seemed like something in a faraway land that had nothing to do with us. We sang songs as we hiked up the hill, sometimes imitating the birds we heard. Except for the fact that the war was still going on, it was a perfect morning. ~ Haruki Murakami

Art comes out of art; it begins with imitation, often in the form of parody, and it's in the process of imitating the voice of others that one comes to learn the sound of one's own. ~ Alan Bennett

When life is rosy, we may slide by with knowing about Jesus, with imitating him and quoting him and speaking of him. But only in suffering will we know Jesus. ~ Joni Eareckson Tada

In love, it's because people want something that doesn't exist, at least abundantly, people tend to put on false masks imitating the non-existant. ~ Daya Kudari

In heaven there is laid up a pattern which he who chooses may behold, and beholding, set his own house in order. The time has now arrived at which they must raise the eye of the soul to the Universal Light which lightens all things. With the eye ever directed toward things fixed and immutable which neither injure nor are injured - these they cannot help imitating. But I quite admit the difficulty of believing that in every man there is an eye of the soul which by the right direction is re-illumined, and is more precious far than ten thousand bodily eyes. ~ Plato

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

Andrea turned her back to Desandra and rolled her eyes. Raphael grimaced. They both looked scandalized. Dear God, what could she have said to scandalize a bouda ...
"No, really!" Desandra nodded. "Okay, so most guys don't have a nice ball sack, right? It looks all hairy and wrinkled like some small animal died between their legs, but Gerardo's is like two plums in a velvet bag ... "
Derek, who'd been lingering in the doorway, took a careful step to the left behind the wall and disappeared from my view.
Kill me, somebody. I raised my hand. "Hold that thought. I need to borrow Andrea for a minute."
I grabbed her arm and pulled her into the hallway. Behind us Raphael growled, "Don't leave me!"
Andrea leaned towards me. "Plums."
"Listen ... "
Andrea raised her hands, imitating holding plums the size of small coconuts, and moved them up and down. ~ Ilona Andrews

You would not believe his imitation of Coach Donnelly," Ben said.
I laughed, imagining.
"Run as fast as you can," he said, trying to sound like what Bryce probably sounded like imitating Donnelly, but failing. "Like the French did in the Civil War, when they eluded the Greeks on their way from Charleston to Nashville."
"We knew the only way to attack the axis of evil was by storming the beaches at Normandy," I said back. ~ Bill Konigsberg

I knew a girl who was so different, so darling, so ahead of her time that people mocked her until the day they found themselves imitating her. Do you know what she used to say? She used to say "The people who talk behind your back are destined to stay there" behind your back. Never to catch up. That woman was your mother ~ Elizabeth Rudnick

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

As a matter of fact, that's the reason why I've learned to speak this language, and to write it too: so I can speak in the place of a dead man, so I can finish his sentences for him. The murderer got famous, and his story's too well written for me to get any ideas about imitating him. He wrote in his own language. Therefore I'm going to do what was done in this country after Independence: I'm going to take the stones from the old houses the colonists left behind, remove them one by one, and build my own house, my own language. The murderer's words and expressions are my unclaimed goods. Besides, the country's littered with words that don't belong to anyone anymore. ~ Kamel Daoud

In philosophical inquiry, the human spirit, imitating the movement of the stars, must follow a curve which brings it back to its point of departure. To conclude is to close a circle. ~ Charles Baudelaire

An actor is supposed to emulate life. Instead, alas, many are imitating other actors. You don't fashion your knowledge of theatre or your approach to a role on the basis of what other actors have done. This kind of thinking is a great danger, especially in dealing with TV producers who frequently say things like, 'This is a Sean Connery type.' ~ Theodore Bikel

Imitating another style is simply a sham. ~ Tsunetomo Yamamoto

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

I betcha masturbate while reading your books. He started imitating a woman's voice. "Oh fuck me harder, Flabio, oh yes, oh no, but we shouldn't , you're too big and I'm a virgin, but oh, you fit so right, but we still mustn't, we're not married, but oh, oh, oh, yes, yes, YES! ~ Dante ~ Marita A. Hansen

Bast crouched down and began making weird chittering noises. Uh-oh. She was imitating birds. I'd seen enough cats do this when they were stalking. Suddenly my own obituary flashed in my head: Carter Kane, 14, tragically died in Paris wen he was eaten by his sister's cat, Muffin. ~ Rick Riordan

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

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

Each time you sit down to write, you should cleanse your linguistic palate by reading some things that are vastly unlike what you've been writing. As a warm-up activity, you might try actively imitating a writing style different from your own. It's hard to do and highly unpriming. ~ Michael Erard

They tried to substitute for Christianity a body of dogmas called "dialectical materialism." As Orestes Brownson pointed out in 1849, and as Arnold Toynbee has also written, communism was really a kind of caricature of Christianity, borrowing certain of its moral affirmations, imitating its dogmas, and even appropriating some of its phrases. This made communism all the more dangerous: for the superficial similarities between Christian morality and the pretended Soviet morality sometimes deluded Americans and people in other free states into thinking that communism had high moral aspirations. ~ Russell Kirk

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

being yourself it's not ridiculous, but it is showing who you are and not imitating others. ~ Shanie Castiello

The hermit keeps a window open onto the sky, without which the world would perish from suffocation, ugliness and boredom. He is the only one, along with the poet, who still speaks the language of the beyond, who makes existence sacred, who gives life this verticality without which humanity is buffeted about beneath itself. He is a rampart against the assaults of mediocrity, nastiness, hatred that is intolerant of its opposite. He is this force, made out of weakness, that warms the atmosphere, melts the winter of the world. For men turned toward secondary things, his presence recalls the existence of the essential things: the order of the world, knowledge, the priority of salvation and the adoration of the Supreme, by imitating the sunflower whose heliotropism has much to teach us, who never turns away from the trisolar brightness. Model and prototype, the hermit represents, in a chaotic and dehumanized world, a final landmark, an ultimate axis for reference. He allows man to remain standing by recalling the Absolute; when deprived of the Totality, man becomes totalitarian by compensation. ~ Jean Biès

What do zombies chant at a riot?"

"Grrarphsnarg?" he asked, in a surprisingly well-done bit of mindless zombie imitating.

"No, but that was really good. Disconcertingly good."

"I was deceased for a time."

"True. But anyway, the rioters get all riled up, and they chant: 'What do we want? Brains! When do we want them? Brains!'" I fell into a wave of appropriately boisterous laughter; Ethan seemed less impressed.

"I truly hope the stipend we pay you doesn't get spent on the development of jokes like that. ~ Chloe Neill

A sequel is an admission that you've been reduced to imitating yourself. ~ Don Marquis

Imitating paper isn't the goal; the goal is surpassing paper. ~ Mark Bernstein

Why must you choose the only dignified person in this crew as the butt of your mockery?"
"Because, my dear man," Ham said, imitating Breeze's accent, "you are, by far, the best butt we have. ~ Brandon Sanderson

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

To a man, ornithologists are tall, slender, and bearded so that they can stand motionless for hours, imitating kindly trees, as they watch for birds. ~ Gore Vidal

If you're just going to be like everyone else, why are you even doing this? If you merely replicate competitors, there's no point for your existence. Even if you wind up losing, it's better to go down fighting for what you believe in instead of just imitating others. ~ Jason Fried

The majority of photographers still seek artistic effects, imitating other mediums of graphic expression. The result is a hybrid product that does not succeed in giving their work the most valuable characteristic it should have, - photographic quality. ~ Tina Modotti

Anybody who is imitating somebody else, no matter who it us, is heading in the wrong direction. It is impossible to become like somebody else. Your only hope is to become more fully yourself. ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

But on the whole, though I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavour, a better and happier man than I otherwise should have been had I not attempted it; as those who aim at perfect writing by imitating the engraved copies, their hand is mended by the endevour, and is tolerable while it continues fair and legible ~ Benjamin Franklin

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

No art can be grafted with success on another art. For though they all profess the same origin, and to proceed from the same stock, yet each has its own peculiar modes both of imitating nature and of deviating from it ... The deviation, more especially, will not bear transplantation to another soil. ~ Joshua Reynolds

I think when we were starting out, it was more about imitating our songwriting heroes. We would try to write songs like Neil Finn, or we would try to write songs like Ray Davies, or we would try to write songs like Glenn Tilbrook. ~ Adam Schlesinger

Remember that the expressions and vocal patterns you are committing to film will become synecdoches ... That means something little that stands in for something big. Your smile will stand in for all human happiness. Your tears will be a model for everyone else's sadness.
... You have a responsibility to the people who will repeat your lines, wink your winks, imitate your laughter without knowing they are imitating anything. This is the secret power that actors hold. It is almost like being a god. We create what it is to be human when we stand fifty feet tall on a silk screen.
So you'd better be good at it, for God's sake. ~ Catherynne M Valente

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

In the snobbery of science, each branch attempts to rise in the social scale by imitating the methods of the next higher science and by ignoring the methods and phenomena of the sciences beneath. ~ Gilbert Newton Lewis

I seemed doomed to always play supporting roles in someone else's story. Far too many times I had asked myself whether art was imitating life or if it was the other way around. ~ M.L. Rio

Instead of imitating me, you simply loiter. ~ Dejan Stojanovic

Suddenly hope was a thing of the past. I was just one of the other people. I tried imitating the expression on their faces; we still had five days. Then one day; then no time at all. Then I became one of them and in a few hours I'd forgotten that one can look from solid houses with horror and pity at people trekking by. ~ Christa Wolf

Ignorance lowers you, curiosity elevates you;
knowledge puts you on a higher pedestal than information.
Confusion lowers you, understanding elevates you;
discernment puts you on a higher pedestal than intellect.
Imprudence lowers you, insight elevates you;
wisdom puts you on a higher pedestal than perception.
Greed lowers you, contentment elevates you;
peace puts you on a higher pedestal than indifference.
Bitterness lowers you, happiness elevates you;
joy puts you on a higher pedestal than pleasure.
Anger lowers you, patience elevates you;
longstanding puts you on a higher pedestal than tolerance.
Cruelty lowers you, compassion elevates you;
kindness puts you on a higher pedestal than apathy.
Despair lowers you, hope elevates you;
perseverance puts you on a higher pedestal than dispassion.
Fear lowers you, courage elevates you;
faith puts you on a higher pedestal than confidence.
Hatred lowers you, mercy elevates you;
love puts you on a higher pedestal than sympathy.

Illiteracy lowers you, education elevates you;
enlightenment puts you on a higher pedestal than talent.
Imitating lowers you, creativity elevates you;
originality puts you on a higher pedestal than innovation.
Incompetence lowers you, skill elevates you;
excellence puts you on a higher pedestal than enthusiasm.
Laziness lowers you, hard work elevates you;
diligence puts you ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

He was changed as completely as Amory Blaine could ever be changed. Amory plus Beatrice plus two years in Minneapolis - these had been his ingredients when he entered St. Regis'. But the Minneapolis years were not a thick enough overlay to conceal the "Amory plus Beatrice" from the ferreting eyes of a boarding school, so St. Regis' had very painfully drilled Beatrice out of him and begun to lay down new and more conventional planking on the fundamental Amory. But both St. Regis' and Amory were unconscious of the fact that this fundamental Amory had not in himself changed. Those qualities for which he had suffered: his moodiness, his tendency to pose, his laziness, and his love of playing the fool, were now taken as a matter of course, recognized eccentricities in a star quarter-back, a clever actor, and the editor of the "St. Regis' Tattler"; it puzzled him to see impressionable small boys imitating the very vanities that had not long ago been contemptible weaknesses. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

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

Committing myself to the task of becoming fully human is saving my life now...to become fully human is something extra, a conscious choice that not everyone makes. Based on my limited wisdom and experience, there is more than one way to do this. If I were a Buddhist, I might do it by taking the bodhisattva vow, and if I were a Jew, I might do it by following Torah. Because I am a Christian, I do it by imitating Christ, although i will be the first to admit that I want to stop about a day short of following him all the way.

In Luke's gospel, there comes a point when he turns around and says to the large crowd of those trailing after him, "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple" (14:26). Make of that what you will, but I think it was his way of telling them to go home. He did not need people to go to Jerusalem to die with him. He needed people to go back where they came from and live the kinds of lives that he had risked his own life to show them: lives of resisting the powers of death, of standing up for the little and the least, of turning cheeks and washing feet, of praying for enemies and loving the unlovable. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor

You should always be trying to write a poem you are unable to write, a poem you lack the technique, the language, the courage to achieve. Otherwise you're merely imitating yourself, going nowhere, because that's always easiest. ~ John Berryman

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

Imitating others, I failed to find myself. I looked inside and discovered I only knew my name. When I stepped outside I found my real Self. ~Rumi ~ Maryam Mafi

A writers desire to write can only have come from previous experience of literature, and he'll start by imitating whatever he's read, which usually means what the people around him are writing. ~ Northrop Frye

The confidence in the unlimited power of science is only too often based on a false belief that the scientific method consists in the application of a ready-made technique, or in imitating the form rather than the substance of scientific procedure, as if one needed only to follow some cooking recipes to solve all social problems. It sometimes almost seems as if the techniques of science were more easily learnt than the thinking that shows us what the problems are and how to approach them. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

Suddenly I realized I was standing on the hot wood of the dock, still touching elbows with Adam, staring at the skull-and-crossbones pendant. And when I looked up into his light blue eyes, I saw that he was staring at my neck. No. Down lower.
"What'cha staring at?" I asked.
He cleared his throat. "Tank top or what?" This was his seal of approval, as in, Last day of school or what? or, Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders or what? Hooray! He wasn't Sean, but he was built of the same material. This was a good sign.
I pumped him for more info, to make sure. "What about my tank top?"
"You're wearing it." He looked out across the lake, showing me his profile. His cheek had turned bright red under his tan. I had embarrassed the wrong boy. Damn, it was back to the football T-shirt for me.
No it wasn't, either. I couldn't abandon my plan. I had a fish to catch.
"Look," I told Adam, as if he hadn't already looked. "Sean's leaving at the end of the summer. Yeah, yeah, he'll be back next summer, but I'm afraid I won't be able to compete once he's had a taste of college life and sorority girls. It's now or never, and desperate times call for desperate tank tops."
Adam opened his mouth to say something. I shut him up by raising my hand. Imitating his deep boy-voice, I said, "I don't know why you want to hook up with that jerk." We'd had this conversation whenever we saw each other lately. I said in my normal voice, "I just do, okay? Let me do it, and don't get in ~ Jennifer Echols

Be creative. Remember that we only learnt how to fly when we stopped imitating birds. ~ Paulo Coelho

I think I had a knack for music, but I think what I was more sort of talented at more than anything, because I don't think I'm a great singer, I think that I grew up imitating different voices that I heard. ~ Justin Timberlake

I have good pronunciation no matter what language I speak. Maybe it's because my specialties are rapping and imitating others ~ G-Dragon

If you ever have the good fortune to create a great advertising campaign, you will soon see another agency steal it. This is irritating, but don't let it worry you; nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else's advertising. ~ David Ogilvy

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

The flow. Yeah. Knowing you could step on the court and make it happen. You practiced, sure. But then, when you walked out there, you could just go. You could flow, that was it: you created and you didn't totally know how. You just knew you could, so you did. It wasn't thinking and it wasn't imitating somebody else's moves, though you always looked carefully when you watched good players play. But when you played ... it was something you couldn't explain. Neal used to know. It didn't come from thinking about it. ~ Doug Wilhelm

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

I look at my first books and am glad they weren't published ... You start writing by imitating your heroes, then you keep the heart of that worship in your work. As time goes by, you get other influences and find your own voice. ~ Markus Zusak

I could tell you which writer's rhythms I am imitating. It's not exactly plagiarism, it's falling in love with good language and trying to imitate it. ~ Charles Kuralt

Watch out for púcas as you travel, lad," Cody said, shaking my hand. "Could be imitating anything out there."
"Once again," Tia said as she settled into the seat in front of me, "those are from Irish mythology, you nitwit. ~ Brandon Sanderson

The perfect symmetry between the dismantling of the wall of shame and the end of limitless Nature is invisible only to the rich Western democracies. The various manifestations of socialism destroyed both their peoples and their ecosystems, whereas the powers of the North and the West have been able to save their peoples and some of their countrysides by destroying the rest of the world and reducing its peoples to abject poverty. Hence a double tragedy: the former socialist societies think they can solve both their problems by imitating the West; the West thinks it has escaped both problems and believes it has lessons for others even as it leaves the Earth and its people to die. The West thinks it is the sole possessor of the clever trick that will allow it to keep on winning indefinitely, whereas it has perhaps already lost everything. ~ Anonymous

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

Although I am capable, through long dabbling in blue magic, of imitating any prose in the world (but singularly enough not verse - I am a miserable rhymester), I do not consider myself a true artist, save in one matter: I can do what only a true artist can do - pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation, wean myself abruptly from the habit of things, see the web of the world, and the warp and the weft of that web. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Sometimes Hestia can be quite silly, but I know she is an only child, with an absent mother and a father who wasn't quite sure how to raise a daughter. She may be trying to imitate me in the extreme, but part of me wonders if she is so afraid of doing or saying the wrong thing that she thinks imitating others is the only way to be safe. Then it's not her who is the one being rejected. ~ Tricia Levenseller

When you use a dialect, you worry that the people you're imitating will think you're making fun of them. ~ Jack Nicholson

Tamlin thought about what he'd heard during his rescue and said, "And in addition to his talent of imitating father's voice, Talbot has become some sort of monster." "Well," she(Tazi)said. "In a manner of speaking, yes"
"And you just returned from training as a master assassin?"
"That is not how I'd describe myself."
"Cat burglar, then. Just like mother."
Well, yes. If you must be rude about it."
"And even the chambermaid has divine powers?"
"That's right" Tazi said. "That, and she's actually our sister"
"Our sister..." "It appears that everyone I know has become some sort of storybook hero--" he sighed-- "And all I can boast is 'most often kidnapped.'"
"Now would be a bad time to tell you about Larajin's twin brother?" Tazi asked. She raised a solemn eyebrow, but the quirk upon her lips was all mischief
"Now you're making things up"
She kept smiling, but shook her head.
"Next you'll tell me he's an elf"
Tamlin strove not to take offense at her wild laughter, even though it continued long after they had turned off the streets of Selgaunt and rumbled through the gate to Stormweather Towers. ~ Dave Gross