“Weakness can imitate strength if bound properly, just as cowardice can imitate heroism if given nowhere to flee.”

Source: The Genius of Christianity or the Spirit and Beauty of the Christian Religion

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 96

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)

Cassandra (1860)
Context: The great reformers of the world turn into the great misanthropists, if circumstances or organisation do not permit them to act. Christ, if He had been a woman, might have been nothing but a great complainer. Peace be with the misanthropists! They have made a step in progress; the next will make them great philanthropists; they are divided but by a line.
The next Christ will perhaps be a female Christ. But do we see one woman who looks like a female Christ? or even like "the messenger before" her "face", to go before her and prepare the hearts and minds for her?
To this will be answered that half the inmates of Bedlam begin in this way, by fancying that they are "the Christ."
People talk about imitating Christ, and imitate Him in the little trifling formal things, such as washing the feet, saying His prayer, and so on; but if anyone attempts the real imitation of Him, there are no bounds to the outcry with which the presumption of that person is condemned.

Examples of self-translation (c. 2004), Quotes - Zitate - Citations - Citazioni

Source: Blue-Eyed Devil