“He who imitates what is evil always goes beyond the example that is set; on the contrary, he who imitates what is good always falls short.”
L'imitazione del male supera sempre l'esempio; comme per il contrario, l'imitazione del bene è sempre inferiore.
Storia d' Italia (1537-1540)
Original
L'imitazione del male supera sempre l'esempio, come per il contrario l'imitazione del bene è sempre inferiore.
Storia d'Italia
Variant: L'imitazione del male supera sempre l'esempio; comme per il contrario, l'imitazione del bene è sempre inferiore.
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Francesco Guicciardini 8
Italian writer, historian and politician 1483–1540Related quotes

L’écrivain original n’est pas celui qui n’imite personne, mais celui que personne ne peut imiter.
The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1979) 3rd edition
Variant translations:
The original style is not the style which never borrows of any one, but that which no other person is capable of reproducing.
As translated by Charles I. White (1856) Part 2, Book 1, Chapter 3
An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1980) 15th edition.
Le génie du Christianisme (1802)

“We are always ready to imitate what is evil; and faults are quickly copied where virtues appear inattainable.”
Proclivis est enim malorum aemulatio, et quorum virtutes assequi nequeas, cito imitaris vitia.
Leter 107
Letters

“A man never knows what a fool he is until he hears himself imitated by one.”
Quoted by Max Beerbohm in Hebert Beerbohm Tree: Some Memories of Him and of His Art Collected by Max Beerbohm http://books.google.com/books?id=wM08AAAAIAAJ&q="A+man+never+knows+what+a+fool+he+is+until+he+hears+himself+imitated+by+one"&pg=PA312#v=onepage (1920).

Discourse no. 6; vol. 1, p. 158.
Discourses on Art

"GRRM Interview Part 2: Fantasy and History", interview with TIME Entertainment http://entertainment.time.com/2011/04/18/grrm-interview-part-2-fantasy-and-history/ (18 April 2011)

Paul O. Schmidt to Leon Goldensohn, March 13, 1946.