Introduction to New Dimensions 1, edited by Robert Silverberg
It – How Churches and Leaders Can Get It and Keep It (2008, Zondervan)
“The most original minds borrowed from one another.”
"Lettre XII: sur M. Pope et quelques autres poètes fameux," Lettres philosophiques (1756 edition)
Variants:
He looked on everything as imitation. The most original writers, he said, borrowed one from another. Boyardo has imitated Pulci, and Ariofio Boyardo. The instruction we find in books is like fire; we fetch it from our neighbour, kindle it as home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
Historical and Critical Memoirs of the Life and Writings of M. de Voltaire (1786) by Louis Mayeul Chaudon, p. 348
What we find in books is like the fire in our hearths. We fetch it from our neighbors, we kindle it at home, we communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
As translated in Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists (2008), by James Geary, p. 373
Context: Thus, almost everything is imitation. The idea of The Persian Letters was taken from The Turkish Spy. Boiardo imitated Pulci, Ariosto imitated Boiardo. The most original minds borrowed from one another. Miguel de Cervantes makes his Don Quixote a fool; but pray is Orlando any other? It would puzzle one to decide whether knight errantry has been made more ridiculous by the grotesque painting of Cervantes, than by the luxuriant imagination of Ariosto. Metastasio has taken the greatest part of his operas from our French tragedies. Several English writers have copied us without saying one word of the matter. It is with books as with the fire in our hearths; we go to a neighbor to get the embers and light it when we return home, pass it on to others, and it belongs to everyone
"Ten Ways to Avoid Lending Your Wheelbarrow to Anybody", from Adrian Mitchell's Greatest Hits (1991).
Lecture: The Lost Arts, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
The Beginning of Time (1996)
22 September 1830.
Table Talk (1821–1834)
Context: A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket: let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection; and trust more to your imagination than to your memory.
“Where there is much pretension, much has been borrowed:”
As quoted in Mental Recreation; or, Select Maxims (1831), p. 234
Context: Where there is much pretension, much has been borrowed: nature never pretends.
“What if he has borrowed the matter and spoiled the form, as it oft falls out?”
Book III, Ch. 8. Of the Art of Conversation
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“I try not to borrow, first you borrow then you beg.”
