No writer can be fully convicted of imitation except there is a concur…

Samuel Johnson
884 citations
No writer can be fully convicted of imitation except there is a concurrence of more resemblance than can be imagined to have happened by chance; as where the same ideas are conjoined without any natural series or necessary coherence, or where not only the thought but the words are copied. ✨ Samuel Johnson (1825). The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With Murphy's Essay, p.106
Thought
11

More Author Quotes

The authour who imitates his predecessors only by furnishing himself with thoughts and elegances out of the same general magazine of literature, can with little more propriety be reproached as a plag … ▶
A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but, one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still. ✨ In James Boswell 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' (1791) vol. 1, p. 263, n. 3 (1754)
I do not care to speak ill of a man behind his back, but I believe he is an attorney.
A man may be very sincere in good principles, without having good practice. ✨ James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1786). Boswell's Life of Johnson: Including Boswell's Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides, a … ▶
Friendship is not always the sequel of obligation. ✨ 'The Lives of the English Poets' (1779-81) 'James Thomson'

More Author Quotes

Most Cited Authors

The Best Quotes

Most Liked Authors

Curated Author Quotes