“The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.”

The Divinity College Address (1838)

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Ralph Waldo Emerson727

American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882

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Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Source: 1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance

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“The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.”

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