Quotes about copying
page 2

“To produce good sculpture it is not necessary to copy the works of antiquity; it is necessary first of all to regard the works of nature, and to see in those of the classics only the method by which they have interpreted nature.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Attributed to Auguste Rodin by Isadora Duncan, As quoted in Modern Dancing and Dancers (1912) by John Ernest Crawford Flitch, p. 105.
1900s-1940s

Nature

“Herbert Casson was a highly prolific writer on management, with a career as a management guru spanning some four decades. A skilled writer who was also a successful entrepreneur, he used his own experiences and acute observations of the world around him to develop a philosophy of management based on the concept of ‘efficiency’. He published more than seventy books, which by the time of his death had sold more than half a million copies around the world. Something of a maverick, he was never really accepted by the business academic community in either Britain or America. His books were popular and populist, highly entertaining and full of penetrating insight.”

Morgen Witzel (1960) Canadian historian, business theorist

Source: Fifty key figures in management, 2004, p. 42

Death, Books, World, Communication

““Do you actually hope to convert the whole of mankind?”
“Belay that! Anyhow, if you mean, Do we hope to make everybody into copies of us? The answer is, No. Mind, I’m not in Parliament or Admiralty, but I follow debates and I read the philosophers. One trouble with the old machine culture was that, by its nature, it did force people to become more and more alike. Not only did this fail in the end—disastrously—but to the extent it succeeded, it was a worse disaster.” Lohannaso smote the rail with a mighty fist. “Damnation, Thomas! We need all the diversity, all the assorted ways of living and looking and thinking, we can get!””

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 11 (p. 119)

People, Hope, Way, Nature

“All men want to be different, and to be greater than they are; they seek for an air other than their own, and a mind different from what they possess; they take their style and manner at chance. They make experiments upon themselves without considering that what suits one person will not suit everyone, that there is no universal rule for taste or manners, and that there are no good copies.”

François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680) French author of maxims and memoirs

Reflections on Various Subjects (1665–1678), VII. On Air and Manner

Men, Universe, Chance, Personality

“I do not paint by copying nature. Everything I do springs from my wild imagination.”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

Source: 1890s - 1910s, The Writings of a Savage (1996), p. 22: quote in a letter to Ambroise Vollard, 1900

Imagination, Spring, Nature, Painting

“One’s ears are weary of the voice of the art teacher who sits like the parrot on his perch, learning the jargon of the studios, making but poor copy and calling it criticism. We have had enough of their omniscience, their parade of technical knowledge, and their predilection for the wrong end of the stick.”

Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898) English illustrator and author

The Art of the Hoarding (1894)

Art, Knowledge, Learning, Teachers

“Don't copy nature too closely. Art is an abstraction; as you dream amide nature, extrapolate art from it and concentrate on what you will create as a result.”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

Source: 1870s - 1880s, The Writings of a Savage (1996), pp. 5 & 22: Gauguin is advising a fellow painter, 1885

Dreams, Art, Nature

“Third, this allowed us to propose what we called the cosmological interpretation of quantum mechanics. Here we interpret the wavefunction for an object as describing not some funky imaginary ensemble of possibilities for what the object might be doing, but rather the actual spatial collection of identical copies of the object that exist in our infinite space. Moreover, quantum uncertainty that you experience simply reflects your inability to self-locate in the Level I multiverse, i. e., to know which of your infinitely many copies throughout space is the one having your subjective perceptions.”

Max Tegmark book Our Mathematical Universe

Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality (2014)

“The masses are only to be regarded as one of three things: either as copies of great personalities, bad copies, clumsily produced in a poor material, or as foils to the great, or finally as their tools”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), p. 20

Personality

“A religious college in Cairo is considering issues of nanotechnology: If replicators are used to prepare a copy of a strip of bacon, right down to the molecular level, but without it ever being part of a pig, how is it to be treated? (If the mind of one of the faithful is copied into a computing machine’s memory by mapping and simulating all its synapses, is the computer now a Moslem? If not, why not? If so, what are its rights and duties?)”

Charles Stross book Accelerando

Source: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 4 (“Halo”), pp. 146-147

Faith, Memory, Parting

“That original intelligence, say the MAGIANS, who is the first principle of all things, discovers himself immediately to the mind and understanding alone; but has placed the sun as his image in the visible universe; and when that bright luminary diffuses its beams over the earth and the firmament, it is a faint copy of the glory which resides in the higher heavens. If you would escape the displeasure of this divine being, you must be careful never to set your bare foot upon the ground, nor spit into a fire, nor throw any water upon it, even though it were consuming a whole city. Who can express the perfections of the Almighty? say the Mahometans. Even the noblest of his works, if compared to him, are but dust and rubbish. How much more must human conception fall short of his infinite perfections? His smile and favour renders men for ever happy; and to obtain it for your children, the best method is to cut off from them, while infants, a little bit of skin, about half the breadth of a farthing. Take two bits of cloth, say the Roman catholics, about an inch or an inch and a half square, join them by the corners with two strings or pieces of tape about sixteen inches long, throw this over your head, and make one of the bits of cloth lie upon your breast, and the other upon your back, keeping them next your skin: There is not a better secret for recommending yourself to that infinite Being, who exists from eternity to eternity.”

David Hume The Natural History of Religion

Part VII - Confirmation of this doctrine
The Natural History of Religion (1757)

Men, Children, Lie, Secret

“I took down my portfolio, to select a drawing to copy in oil. He had never seen my works before, and appeared astonished as his eyes ranged over the sheets. He expressed the warmest admiration, and said, "How hopeless must be the task of my giving any instruction to one who can draw like this?" I pointed out to him that nature is the great study for the artist, and assured him that the reason why my works pleased him was because they are all exact copies of the works of God, — who is the great Architect and perfect Artist; and impressed on his mind this fact, that nature indifferently copied is far superior to the best idealities.”

John James Audubon (1785–1851) American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter

On a meeting with a young artist, Mr. J. B. Kidd, Ch. X, p. 140
The Life and Adventures of John James Audubon, the Naturalist (1868)

God, Nature, Study, Appearance

“What I dislike is that he [= Paul Gauguin ] copied these elements from the Japanese, the Byzantine painters and others. I criticize him for not applying his synthesis to our modern philosophy which is absolutely social, anti-authoritarian and anti-mystical. - There is where the problem becomes serious. This is a step backwards; Gauguin is not a seer, he is a schemer… The symbolists also take this line! What do you think? They must be fought like the pest!”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote of Camille Pissarro, in a letter to his son, 20 April 1891, in Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien, ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro – (translated from the unpublished French letters by Lionel Abel); Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 163
1890's

Problem, Thinking

“(Television) Alabama's ban against vibrators stands…State says there's no constitutional right to an orgasm. (Sylvia) Rita, get my copy of the Bill of Rights. (Rita) I think that's in the Declaration of Independence.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 20

Thinking

“Exploitative is the key word here. It suggests that while you are free to be as sexually miserable as you like, the moment you exchange hard cash for a copy of Playboy, you are in the pornography perpetuation business, and your misery becomes political.
The truth is that pornography is just a sad affair all around. It is there because men in their hundreds of millions want it to be there. Killing pornography is like killing the messenger. The extent to which Larkin was "dependent" on pornography should be a measure our pity, or even our sympathy. But Motion hears the beep of his political pager, and he stands to attention.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

"Political Correctness: Robert Bly and Philip Larkin" (1997)

Men, Truth, Sadness, Business

“For me he's just a hoax. It's empty. It's not interesting. It's dead. Citizen Kane, which I have a copy of — is all the critics' darling, always at the top of every poll taken, but I think it's a total bore. Above all, the performances are worthless. The amount of respect that movie's got is absolutely unbelievable.”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

On the work of Orson Welles
Jan Aghed interview (2002)

Thinking, Dead

“[on having a gay child] And the Three Wise Drag Queens would come, bearing gifts of 1000-thread-count sheets, hair products by Frédéric Fekkai, and a copy of the Immaculate Collection.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Tours and CDs, Revolution Tour

“In any case there is an intense modern interest in machines that imitate life. The great difference between magic and the scientific imitation of life is that where the former is content to copy external appearance, the latter is concerned more with performance and behavior.”

William Grey Walter (1910–1977) American-born British neuroscientist and roboticist

Source: An imitation of life (1950), p. 42.

Life, Behavior, Appearance

“On-line service providers and others have a key role to play in freeing cyberspace of the taint of copyright lawlessness. Accountability for copyright violations committed by users is as essential for advancing this indispensable goal.
Who is responsible if a valuable copyrighted work is downloaded from a provider, and then copied on a digital video machine from which thousands of copies can be made, the last copy as pure and pristine as the first? And if no one can be held responsible, then who and what is to prevent the flood that will surely follow? This is a loophole larger than a parade of eight-wheelers through which a dam-busting avalanche of violations can rupture the purpose of your bill every day.”

Jack Valenti (1921–2007) President of the MPAA

Testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives on copyright immunities for ISPs. (7 February 1996) http://www.judiciary.house.gov/legacy/461.htm

“It happened fortunately that during this period of turmoil the guidance of the Christian Church, the one powerful and permanent institution, was chiefly in the hands of the splendid order of St. Benedict. This saint… seeing that idleness was the besetting danger of monastic establishments, founded at Monte Cassino… a model abbey, in which industry was the daily rule. Among other employments, reading and writing were approved as powerful agents in distracting the mind from unholy thoughts, and in Benedictine monasteries the mechanical exercise of copying mss. became one of the regular occupations.”

James Gow (scholar) (1854–1923) scholar

p, 125
A Companion to School Classics (1888)

Exercises, Reading

“Years ago, my mother and I fell in love with Busybee’s voice, its calm, even tone, and a smile which was always audible in the language. My father, meanwhile, is clipping his nails fastidiously, letting them fall on to an old, spread-out copy of the Times of India, till he sneezes explosively, as he customarily does, sending the crescent-shaped nail-clippings flying into the universe.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Afternoon Raag (1993)

Love, Smile, Universe, Time

“Hey wait a minute, this isn't a Copyright claim now is it? This looks more like a personal ad! How about checking out some of the local press instead of trying to pick up people in other continents? Actually, being in different countries(even on different continents) means that we don't have the same laws here. You know, in Sweden, it's still legal to do a lot of things. Elks can have sex with eachother without being prosecuted for instance. And people are allowed to copy. It's quite natural, both of them, don't you think?”

Peter Sunde (1978) Swedish activist and computer expert

The Pirate Bay Legal Threats: Prophecy House: Email and Response http://web.archive.org/20060423074547/static.thepiratebay.org/huckabay_resp.txt

People, Law, Sex, Nature

“The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors frequently copied other authors at length in works of non-fiction. This practice was useful, and is the only way many authors' works have survived even in part. The copyright system was created expressly for the purpose of encouraging authorship. In the domain for which it was invented — books, which could be copied economically only on a printing press — it did little harm, and did not obstruct most of the individuals who read the books.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

1980s, GNU Manifesto (1985)

Books, Way, Idea, Time

“Graves: When copying the “Dialogues”…why would the :Protocols” alter “coups d'etat: to “revolution”?
Raslovlev: Obviously it was to address the Tsar’s concern over a Russian revolution, eh?”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.80

“The ill-success of the projects of misdirected ingenuity has very naturally the effect of driving those men of practical skill, who, though without scientific knowledge, possess prudence and common sense, to the opposite extreme of caution, and of inducing them to avoid all experiments, and to confine themselves to the careful copying of successful existing structures and machines; a course which, although it avoids risk, would, if generally followed, stop the progress of all improvement. A similar course has sometimes… been adopted by men possessed of scientific as well as practical skill: such men having, in certain cases, from deference to popular prejudice, or from a dread of being reputed us theorists, considered it advisable to adopt the worse and customary design for a work in preference to a better but unusual design.”

William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872) civil engineer

p, 125
"On the Harmony of Theory and Practice in Mechanics" (Jan. 3, 1856)

Men, Nature, Knowledge, Sense

“Evolution embodies information in every part of every organism. … This information doesn't have to be copied into the brain at all. It doesn't have to be "represented" in "data structures" in the nervous system. It can be exploited by the nervous system, however, which is designed to rely on, or exploit, the information in the hormonal systems just as it is designed to rely on, or exploit, the information embodied in your limbs and eyes. So there is wisdom, particularly about preferences, embodied in the rest of the body. By using the old bodily systems as a sort of sounding board, or reactive audience, or critic, the central nervous system can be guided — sometimes nudged, sometimes slammed — into wise policies. Put it to the vote of the body, in effect….When all goes well, harmony reigns and the various sources of wisdom in the body cooperate for the benefit of the whole, but we are all too familiar with the conflicts that can provoke the curious outburst "My body has a mind of its own!" Sometimes, apparently, it is tempting to lump together some of the embodied information into a separate mind. Why? Because it is organized in such a way that it can sometimes make independent discriminations, consult preferences, make decisions, enact policies that are in competition with your mind. At such time, the Cartesian perspective of a puppeteer self trying desperately to control an unruly body-puppet is very powerful. Your body can vigorously betray the secrets you are desperately trying to keep — by blushing and trembling or sweating, to mention only the most obvious cases. It can "decide" that in spite of your well-laid plans, right now would be a good time for sex, not intellectual discussion, and then take embarrassing steps in preparation for a coup d'etat. On another occasion, to your even greater chagrin and frustration, it can turn a deaf ear on your own efforts to enlist it for a sexual campaign, forcing you to raise the volume, twirl the dials, try all manner of preposterous cajolings to persuade it.”

Daniel Dennett (1942) American philosopher

Kinds of Minds (1996)

Wisdom, Secret, Sex, Way

“Eighteen centuries have passed since the Bible was finished. They have been centuries of great changes. In their course the world has been wrought over into newness at almost every point. But, to-day, the text of the Scriptures, after copyings almost innumerable and after having been tossed about through ages of ignorance and tumult, is found by exhaustive criticism to be unaltered in every important particular — there being not a single doctrine, nor duty, nor fact of any grade, that is brought into question by variations of readings — a fact that stands alone in the history of such ancient literature.”

Enoch Fitch Burr (1818–1907) American astronomer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 35.

Age, World, History, Literature

“The main thesis of this non-Aristotelian system is that as yet we all (with extremely few exceptions) copy animals in our nervous processes, and that practically all human difficulties, mental ills … have this … component.”

Alfred Korzybski (1879–1950) Polish scientist and philosopher

Source: Science and Sanity (1933), p. 73.

Animals

“By the time I was 16, the everlasting copying of stuffed birds and withered flowers at the Strasbourg School of Applied Art not only poisoned drawing for me but destroyed my taste for all artistic activity. I took refuge in poetry.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

Looking, Arp, Jean; as quoted by Soby, James Thrall. Arp: The Museum of Modern Art. Doubleday, New York, 1958, Print. p. 12
1960s

School, Art, Flowers, Bird

“There is only one other survey, Datta and Singh’s 1938 History of Hindu Mathematics, recently reprinted but very hard to obtain in the West (I found a copy in a small specialized bookstore in Chennai). They describe in some detail the Indian work in arithmetic and algebra and, supplemented by the equally hard to find Geometry in Ancient and Medieval India by Sarasvati Amma (1979), one can get an overview of most topics.”

David Mumford (1937) American mathematician

[David Mumford, Book Review, Notices of the AMS, March 2010, 57, 3, http://www.ams.org/notices/201003/rtx100300385p.pdf]

History, Mathematics

“Rubens, when past fifty years of age, used the time he did not give to the business of his mission to the King of Spain in copying the superb Italian originals he found in Madrid... Accuracy of the eye, sureness of the hand, the art of carrying the picture on from the indications of the lay-in to the rounding out of the work, and so many other matters which are all of primary importance, demand application at every moment, and the practice of a lifetime.”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

Quote in Journal of Delacroix, Crown Publishers, New York, pp. 543-544
1831 - 1863

Age, Art, Business, Time

“The kindergarten essay got into that underground press we all belong to where something just sort of has a life of its own and moves around and it gets on refrigerators and in the work place and people copy it… I was a minister in the Unitarian church at the time and teaching and I was ready to stop that and do the next phase of my life. So I had quit both those jobs and I was all set up with my studio in Seattle when this other horse came riding by … I'm not a great writer and I'll never get the Nobel Prize or a Pulitzer Prize but I've won the refrigerator door award. And you don't see Faulkner on people's refrigerator.”

Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer

Robert Fulghum : Philosopher King

Life, People, Time, Horse

“I had never thought of advertising as a life work, though I had on the side, written some very successful copy.”

Bruce Fairchild Barton (1886–1967) American author, politician and advertising executive

As quoted in The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators (1984) by Steven Fox

Life, Success

“the more he studied Buffet, the less he thought he could be copied; indeed, the lesson of Buffet was: To succeed in a spectacular fashion you had to be spectacularly unusual.”

Michael Lewis book The Big Short

Source: The Big Short (2010), Chapter Two, In the Land Of The Blind, p. 35

Fashion, Study

“It's nice to have a game that sells a million copies.”

John D. Carmack (1970) American computer programmer, engineer, and businessman

Quoted in John Carmack Biography http://www.biographybase.com/biography/Carmack_John.html.

Game

“The great question is: from which country shall we copy the Constitution?”

Lima Barreto book Os Bruzundangas

Os Bruzundangas (1923)

Question, Country

“Try now to answer my third riddle. By what rule to you tell a copy from an original?”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Pilgrim's Regress

Pilgrim’s Regress 52
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)

“I… chose rather to publish… in puris Naturalibus, or as they were produced as first, than be at the Trouble of reducing them into any other Form… I could not bear the Pains of reading over again a great Part of these Things; either from my being tired with them, or not caring to undergo the Pains and Study in new modelling them. But I have done in this as weakly Mothers, who give up their Offspring to the Care of their Friends, either to Nurse and bring up, or abandon to the wide World. One of which is Mr. Isaac Newton, my Collegue, a Man of great Learning and Sagacity, who revised my Copy and noted such Things as wanted Correction, and even gave me some of his own, which you will see here and there interspersed with mine, not without their due Commendations. The other is Mr. John Collins (who may be deservedly called the Mersennas of our Nation, Born to promote this Science, both with his own Labours, and those of others. Who with much Trouble took care of the Edition.”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

Preface
Geometrical Lectures (1735)

Pain, World, Study, Learning

“That accounts for a truly crazy cycle in which students repeat the worst stylistic excesses the journals contain, learn that those very excesses are what makes their work different from what every damn fool knows and says, write more articles like those they learned from, submit them to journals whose editors publish them because nothing better is available (and because academic journals cannot afford expensive copy editing) and thus provide the raw material for another generation to learn bad habits from.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Source: Writing for Social Scientists (1986), p. 41.

Fools, Learning

“I paint directly – then it's said to be an exact copy; and not art, probably because there's no perspective or shading. It doesn't look like a painting of something, it looks like the thing itself. Instead of looking like a painting of a billboard – the way a w:Reginald Marsh would look – Pop Art seems to be the actual thing. It is intensification, a stylistic intensification of the excitement which the subject matter has for me; but the style is, as you said, cool.”

Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997) American pop artist

Source: 1960's, What is Pop Art? Interviews with eight painters' (1963), pp. 25-27

Art, Way, Painting

“This art is music. It stands quite apart from all the others. In it we do not recognize the copy, the repetition, of any Idea of the inner nature of the world. Yet it is such a great and exceedingly fine art, its effect on man's innermost nature is so powerful, and it is so completely and profoundly understood by him in his innermost being as an entirely universal language, whose distinctness surpasses even that of the world of perception itself, that in it we certainly have to look for more than that exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare animi [exercise in arithmetic in which the mind does not know it is counting] which Leibniz took it to be.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book The World as Will and Representation

Vol. I, Ch. III, The World As Representation: Second Aspect, as translated by Eric F. J. Payne (1958)
The World as Will and Representation (1819; 1844; 1859)

World, Art, Music, Exercises

“Surrealism will usher you into death, which is a secret society. It will glove your hand, burying therein the profound M with which the word Memory begins. Do not forget to make proper arrangements for your last will and testament: speaking personally, I ask that I be taken to the cemetery in a moving van. May my friends destroy every last copy of the printing of the Speech concerning the Modicum of Reality.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, Andre Breton (Manifesto of Surrealism; 1924)

Death, Secret, Reality, Memory

“Copying nature — what is that supposed to mean? Follow the masters! But why should one follow them? The only reason they are masters is that they didn't follow anybody!”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

Source: 1890s - 1910s, The Writings of a Savage (1996), p. 108: cited by Eugène Tardieu, 'Interview with Paul Gauguin,' in L'Écho de Paris, (13 May 1895)

Nature

“In 1891 a student in Paris, I found myself face to face with a beautiful development of landscape painting, which was quite new to me. "Impressionism," together with its numerous progeny of eccentric offshoots, was at the time causing a great furore in the schools. Curiously enough I had been charged with copying Monet's style long before I had seen his actual work, so that my conversion into an enthusiastic Impressionist was short, in fact, an instantaneous process.”

Wynford Dewhurst (1864–1941) British artist

Source: Impressionist Painting: its genesis and development. (1904), p. vii; Preface.

School, Beauty, Time, Painting

“There are in the Exhibition some beautiful examples of such lace amongst the productions of other countries as well as of our own. They are made by the united labour of many women. The cost of a piece of lace will consist of:
# The remuneration to the artist who designs the pattern.
# The cost of the raw material.
# The cost of the labour of a large number of women working on it for many months.
Let us compare this with the cost of a piece of statuary, which is undoubtedly of a much higher class of art; it will consist of:
# The remuneration to the artist who makes the model.
# The cost of the raw material.
# The cost of labour, by assistants in cutting the block to the pattern of the model.
# Finishing the statue by the artist himself.
In lace making the skill of the artist is required only for the production of the first example. Every succeeding copy is made by mere labour: each copy may be considered as an individual, and will cost the same amount of time.
In sculpture the three first processes are quite analogous to those in lace-making. But the fourth process requires the taste and judgment of the artist. It is this which causes it to retain its rank amongst the fine arts, whilst lacemaking must still be classed amongst the industrial.”

Charles Babbage (1791–1871) mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable c…

Source: The Exposition of 1851: Views Of The Industry, The Science, and the Government Of England, 1851, p. 49-50

Women, Beauty, Art, Time

“Until quite recently poetry was taught badly—at least according to current academic standards. Poetry was used to teach grammar, elocution, and rhetoric. It was employed to convey history, both secular and sacred, often to instill patriotic sentiment and religious morality. Poetry was chanted in chorus at female academies. It was copied to teach cursive handwriting and calligraphy. It was memorized by wayward schoolboys as punishment. It was recited by children at public events and family gatherings. Being able to write verse was considered a social grace in both domestic and public life. Going to school meant becoming well versed.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

24
Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991), Poetry as Enchantment (2015)

Life, Children, School, Family

“Workers are not going to be fobbed off with a few shares… or by a carbon copy of the German system of co-determination.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Speech in Southampton (25 May 1971).
1970s

“Copy nature and you infringe on the work of our Lord. Interpret nature and you are an artist.”

Jacques Lipchitz (1891–1973) American and French sculptor

Jacques Lipchitz cited in: Bernard S. Raskas (1976). Living thoughts: inspiration, insight, and wisdom from sources throughout the ages. p. 22; Quoted in: William Safire, ‎Leonard Safir (1990). Words of Wisdom. p. 34

Nature

Michael Simms (software developer) (1973) Video game programmer

Quoted in "Linux Game Publishing - it's possible" http://mstation.org/linuxgamepublishing.php M station (2003)

Game, Personality

“About the beginning of our Civil Wars, in the year 1642, a Chaplain of Sr. Will. Waller's (one evening as we were sitting down to Supper at the Lady Vere's in London, with whom I then dwelt,) shewed me an intercepted Letter written in Cipher. He shewed it me as a Curiosity (and it was indeed the first thing I had ever seen written in Cipher.) And asked me between jeast and earnest, whether I could make any thing of it. And he was surprised when I said (upon the first view) perhaps I might, if it proved no more but a new Alphabet. It was about ten a clock when we rose from Supper. I then withdrew to my chamber to consider of it. And by the number of different Characters therein, (not above 22 or 23:) I judged that it could not be more than a new Alphabet, and in about 2 hours time (before I went to bed) I had deciphered it; and I sent a Copy of it (so deciphered) the next morning to him from whom I had it. And this was my first attempt at Deciphering.”

John Wallis (1616–1703) English mathematician

p, 125
Dr. Wallis's Account of some Passages of his own Life (1696)

War, Time

“The average person, when they see a black man, they would say "Man, he got soul cos' his color." But I disagree with that. I think that God would be a very selfish God if He gave all the soul to one race. He lets his rain fall on the red flowers, the green flowers, the blue flowers; the good, the bad, no races, so He lets His blessings fall on all races. So I think that there are types of souls, like there are different types of cars. But they're all cars. You know, I think that, when a white guy sing[s], if he have soul, that don't mean that he had to copy no negro to get it. I believe if he feels, when one sings from the heart and it reaches another heart, that's soul.”

Little Richard (1932) American pianist, singer and songwriter

Remarks on the question: can a white man sing soul music?. Pop Chronicles: Show 15 - The Soul Reformation I: A symposium on soul http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19764/m1/, interview recorded 1.2.1968 http://web.archive.org/web/20110615153027/http://www.library.unt.edu/music/special-collections/john-gilliland/o-s.

God, Cars, Color, Guy

“I used to carry a copy of Ulysses with me everywhere just in case I was knocked down by a bus. It seemed more important than having clean underwear.”

Craig Raine (1944) Poet

The Guardian, February 10, 2004. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/feb/10/books.booksnews2

“To-morrow comes, true copy of to-day,
And empty shadow of what is to be;
Yet cheated Hope on future still depends,
And ends but only when our being ends.”

John Clare (1793–1864) English poet

"Hope"
Poems Chiefly from Manuscript

Hope, Future, Dependency, Cheating

“A copy of Dante's Purgatorio excited his especial disgust."French, eh?" he said. "I guessed as much, and pretty dirty too, I shouldn't wonder. Now just you wait while I look up these here books"—how he said it!—"in my list. Particularly against books the Home Secretary is. If we can't stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop its being brought in from outside."”

Evelyn Waugh book Vile Bodies

Source: Vile Bodies (1930), Chapter 2

Books, Home, Literature, Waiting

“Among our neighbors of Central and Southern America, we see the Caucasian mingled with the Indian and the African. They have the forms of free government, because they have copied them. To its benefits they have not attained, because that standard of civilization is above their race. Revolution succeeds Revolution, and the country mourns that some petty chief may triumph, and through a sixty days' government ape the rulers of the earth.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

Speech, 1858
1850s

Country

“A guy told me he liked cherries… But… I waited to see if he was gonna say tomato… Before I realized he likes cherries just… All right, that joke is ridiculous. That's like a carbon copy of the previous joke but with different ingredients. I don't know what I was trying to pull off there.”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Strategic Grill Locations

Guy, Waiting

“The God Delusion by the atheist writer Richard Dawkins, is remarkable in the first place for having achieved some sort of record by selling over a million copies. But what is much more remarkable than that economic achievement is that the contents – or rather lack of contents – of this book show Dawkins himself to have become what he and his fellow secularists typically believe to be an impossibility: namely, a secularist bigot. (Helpfully, my copy of The Oxford Dictionary defines a bigot as ‘an obstinate or intolerant adherent of a point of view’).”

Antony Flew (1923–2010) British analytic and evidentialist philosopher

Flew's review of The God Delusion

God, Books

“Harriet: [making an excuse] Um… I'm looking for a copy of The Wheat-Free Guide to Creative Visualization in Co-dependent Past-Life Relationships.
Mo: Huh. Jeez, I never heard of that one… Wonder if it's in spirituality or cooking.”

Alison Bechdel book Dykes to Watch Out For

#21, "By the Book" (1987), collected in More DTWOF (1988).
Dykes to Watch Out For

Life, Past, Dependency, Cooking

“Now, a fancy ball is bad enough in London, where milliners are many, and where theatres have costumes that may be borrowed or copied; but in the country, where people are left to their own devices—truly to them may be applied the old poet's account of murderers, "their fancies are all frightful.””

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

People, Country

“Fools talk of imitation and copying, all is imitation.”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote of Gainsborough in a Letter to John Henderson, 27th June 1773
1770 - 1788

Fools

“Illustrious Lord, hearing that your Excellency has gone to the court of his Imperial Majesty [Charles V], I abstain from coming to Mantua, sighing at my bad fortune in not having left Bologna soon enough to meet your Grace. At Venice I shall prepare the copy of the portrait of his Majesty, which I take home with me at your Excellency's bidding.”

Titian (1488–1576) Italian painter

In a letter to the Duke of Mantua, from Bologna, 10 March 1533; as quoted by J.A.Y. Crowe & G.B. Cavalcaselle in Titian his life and times - With some account..., publisher John Murray, London, 1877, p. 370
The portrait which Titian took home and repeated a second time he doubtless sent to Charles V. The replica was not sent to Mantua till after 1536, but there it appears to have remained. Another example besides that of the Madrid Museum came into the hands of Charles the First of England.
1510-1540
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Titian#/media/File:Tizian_081.jpg
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Titian#/media/File:Tizian_081.jpg

Home

“Do people notice Hillary is copying my airplane rallies - she puts the plane behind her like I have been doing from the beginning.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Tweet https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/778237485402980352 (20 September 2016), quoted in "Trump blasts Clinton for 'copying' his airplane rallies" http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-blasts-clinton-for-copying-his-airplane-rallies/article/2602310 by Kelly Cohen, Washington Examiner (20 September 2016) 2010s, 2016, September

People

“It is interesting to remember that someone gave me a copy of Prof. Thomas Sowell's book, Education, Myths and Tragedies, in which he predicted much of what has happened to blacks and education. I threw it in the trash, unread, declaring that he was not a black man since no black could take the positions that he had taken, whatever they were, since I had only heard his views were not those of a black man.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Books, Education

“Fine Art then, records by idealised imitation the glorious works of good men, whilst it holds those of bad men up to our abhorrence — it gives to posterity their images, either on the tinted canvass or the sculptured marble — it imitates the beautiful effects of nature as seen in the glowing landscape or the rising storm, and perpetuates the appearance of those beauteous gems of the seasons — flowers and fruits, which, though fading whilst the painter catches their tints, yet live after decay by and through his genius.
Industrial Art, on the contrary, aims at the embellishment of the works of man, by and through that power which is given to the artist for the investigation of the beautiful in nature; and in transferring it to the loom, the printing machine, the potter's wheel, or the metal worker's mould, he reproduces nature in a new form, adapting it to his purpose by an intelligence arising out of his knowledge as an artist and as a workman. In short, the adaptation of the natural type to a new material compels him to reproduce, almost create, as well as imitate — invent as well as copy”

George Wallis

design as well as draw! George Wallis. " Art Education for the people. No IV. The principles of Fine Art as Applied to Industrial Purposes http://books.google.com/books?id=l55GAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA231." In: People's & Howitt's Journal: Of Literature, Art, and Popular Progress, Vol. 3. John Saunders ed. 1847, p. 231.

Men, Beauty, Art, Intelligence

“If the artist only reproduces superficial features as photography does, if he copies the lineaments of a face exactly, without reference to character, he deserves no admiration. The resemblance which he ought to obtain is that of the soul; that alone matters; it is that which the sculptor or painter should seek beneath the mask of features.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Art, 1912, Ch. VII. Of Yesterday and of to-day, p. 121

Soul

“Winning is an important thing, but to have your own style, to have people copy you, to admire you, that is the greatest gift.”

Johan Cruyff (1947–2016) Dutch association football player

reported in Jonathan Wilson (Eurosport, 24 March 2016), Johan Cruyff's legacy? The whole of modern football http://www.eurosport.co.uk/football/johan-cruyff-s-legacy-the-whole-of-modern-football_sto5368491/story.shtml.

People

“The cultivation of science is a luxury of no common kind amid the bustle and vexation of life, and is quite compatible with the most active professional duties. Your education and the example you have had to copy will, I am sure, guard you against those presumptuous and skeptical opinions which scientific knowledge too often engenders. In the ardour of pursuit and under the intoxication of success scientific men are apt to forget that they are the instrument by which Providence is gradually revealing the wonders of creation, and that they ought to exercise their functions with the same humility as those who are engaged in unfolding the mysteries of His revealed will.”

David Brewster (1781–1868) British astronomer and mathematician

In a letter to James David Forbes, as found in Life and letters of James David Forbes, p. 39.

Life, Men, Education, Exercises

“I have studied the art of the ancients and the art of the moderns, avoiding any preconceived system and without prejudice. I no longer wanted to imitate the one than to copy the other; nor, furthermore, was it my intention to attain the trivial goal of "art for art's sake". No! I simply wanted to draw forth, from a complete acquaintance with tradition, the reasoned and independent consciousness of my own individuality.”

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) French painter

1840s - 1850s, Realist Manifesto', 1851/1855

Art, Study, Drawing

“If we wish to imitate the physical sciences, we must not imitate them in their contemporary, most developed form; we must imitate them in their historical youth, when their state of development was comparable to our own at the present time. Otherwise we should behave like boys who try to copy the imposing manners of full-grown men without understanding their raison d’être, also without seeing that in development one cannot jump over intermediate and preliminary phases.”

Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967) German-American psychologist and phenomenologist

Source: Gestalt Psychology. 1930, p. 32

Men, Youth, Boy, Understanding

“I grant you that the artist does not see Nature as she appears to the vulgar, because his emotion reveals to him the hidden truths beneath appearances.
But, after all, the only principle in Art is to copy what you see. Dealers in esthetics to the contrary, every other method is fatal. There is no recipe for improving nature.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Art, 1912, Ch. I. Realism in Art, p. 33

Truth, Art, Nature, Appearance

“The inference to be drawn from all this is, that the made-up and dogmatic Christianity of the Constantinian period is simply an offspring of the numerous conflicting sects, half-castes themselves, born of Pagan parents. Each of these could claim representatives converted to the so-called orthodox body of Christians. And, as every newly-born dogma had to be carried out by the majority of votes, every sect colored the main substance with its own hue, till the moment when the emperor enforced this revealed olla-podrida, of which he evidently did not himself understand a word, upon an unwilling world as the religion of Christ. Wearied in the vain attempt to sound this fathomless bog of international speculations, unable to appreciate a religion based on the pure spirituality of an ideal conception, Christendom gave itself up to the adoration of brutal force as represented by a Church backed up by Constantine. Since then, among the thousand rites, dogmas, and ceremonies copied from Paganism, the Church can claim but one invention as thoroughly original with her — namely, the doctrine of eternal damnation, and one custom, that of the anathema.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume II, Chapter VII

World, Religion, Color, Understanding

“When you buy a song file what you are buying is not a stamped product, but permission. Permission to copy a track from a sanctioned vendor. But it is just as easy if not easier from people to copy from one another. Who needs a middle man unless they offer an added value and do it at a motivating price point?”

Richard Menta American journalist

Source Record Industry Digital Growth Doomed by Mechanical Rates http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/8002/mechanicals.htm - 10/05/2008 Quotes from the MP3 Newswire

People, Motivation

“I'd remind you that in these experiments so far, about one quarter of the lambs that were born alive died within a few days because they hadn't completed normal development. Now, what may be being suggested here is that copies of children would be being produced, and some of those would die soon after birth. So I think that for a clinician to be suggesting doing that is a quite appalling and sad thing for him to be suggesting.”

Ian Wilmut (1944) embryologist

On proposals for human cloning in an Interview on The NewsHour, PBS (8 January 1998) http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/jan-june98/cloning_1-8.html.

Children, Sadness, Birth, Thinking

“Why is it bad to use an unauthorized copy of a proprietary program? Because it’s proprietary! So an unauthorized copy is almost as nasty as an authorized copy of the same program. They are both nasty because they are proprietary. The users don’t have control over them. If they pay developer – that makes it worse, because they are rewarding this delinquency. That’s why the authorized copy is worse. But they are both bad because they are both proprietary software. If you want freedom, you have to get rid of them both, because they both control you.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

"Richard Stallman: Facebook IS Mass Surveillance", RT (2 December 2011) http://rt.com/news/richard-stallman-free-software-875/ 2010s

Freedom

Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639) Italian philosopher, theologian, astrologer, and poet

"Letter of 1607", as cited by Eisenstein, Elizabeth L., 2012, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge University Press, p. 218.

God, Books, Grass, Learning

“I dedicate this book to all my readers, irrespective of whether they purchased my book, illegally obtained a copy, downloaded it or borrowed it from someone else. Some went ahead and directly asked me to send them a soft-copy of my book. Special salute to them as well.”

Gaurav Sharma (author) (1992) Author and novelist

Gone are the Days (2016)

Books

“You want to do something that shows some type individuality and talent and imagination ¿ at the same time, you want to be truthful to the predecessors, because obviously the audience liked something about them and you have to replicate that experience to a certain extent. Not to just go ahead and make something that¿s completely different and ruin a franchise. At the same time, you don't want to be embarrassed in front of your peers and look like you¿re just copying something, and there's nothing individual. It's a very tricky balance. There are pressures, because you¿re going to be compared to the predecessors.”

Renny Harlin (1959) Finnish film director and film producer

Interview With Renny Harlin http://www.ign.com/articles/2001/04/27/interview-with-renny-harlin (April 27, 2001)

Truth, Imagination, Time

“Beware of the possible reason some people are honestly down and out - it is because they tried to copy the many who are superficially doing well.”

Eugene J. Martin (1938–2005) American artist

Annotated Drawings by Eugene J. Martin: 1977-1978

People

“The university immediately published my pamphlet, and it was sent to ﬁfty People’s Commissariats. It was distributed only in the Soviet Union, since in the days just before the start of the World War it came out in an edition of one thousand copies in all.
Soviet Union, since in the days just before the start of the World War it came out in an edition of one thousand copies in all. The number of responses was not very large. There was quite an interesting reference from the People’s Commissariat of Transportation in which some optimization problems directed at decreasing the mileage of wagons was considered, and a good review of the pamphlet appeared in the journal "The Timber Industry."
At the beginning of 1940 I published a purely mathematical version of this work in Doklady Akad. Nauk [76], expressed in terms of functional analysis and algebra. However, I did not even put in it a reference to my published pamphlet—taking into account the circumstances I did not want my practical work to be used outside the country
In the spring of 1939 I gave some more reports—at the Polytechnic Institute and the House of Scientists, but several times met with the objection that the work used mathematical methods, and in the West the mathematical school in economics was an anti-Marxist school and mathematics in economics was a means for apologists of capitalism. This forced me when writing a pamphlet to avoid the term "economic" as much as possible and talk about the organization and planning of production; the role and meaning of the Lagrange multipliers had to be given somewhere in the outskirts of the second appendix and in the semi Aesopian language.”

Leonid Kantorovich (1912–1986) Russian mathematician

L.V. Kantorovich (1996) Descriptive Theory of Sets and Functions. p. 41; As cited in: K. Aardal, ‎George L. Nemhauser, ‎R. Weismantel (2005) Handbooks in Operations Research and Management Science, p. 19-20

War, People, World, School

“A copy of the statement I am making tonight concerning developments in Cuba and the reaction of my Government thereto has been handed to your Ambassador in Washington. In view of the gravity of the developments to which I refer, I want you to know immediately and accurately the position of my Government in this matter.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1962, First letter to Nikita Khrushchev

“The Catholic Church has a lot of sins on the conscience regarding the health prevention. I still have a copy of a church magazine from 1905 that condemns the use of vaccines. Until recently, the Church believed that every illness is the result of God's decision. So if the disease attacked, then it was necessary to accept it with dignity – as the judgment of the Supreme.”

Włodzimierz Ptak (1928–2019) immunologist

Mazurek, Maria (7 July 2017): Cudowna armia, która broni naszego ciała http://plus.gazetakrakowska.pl/magazyn/a/cudowna-armia-ktora-broni-naszego-ciala,12271571. Gazeta Krakowska (in Polish), pp. 18–19.

God, Health, Disease, Decision

“A painting is above all a product of the artist's imagination, it must never be a copy. If, at a later stage, he wants to add two or three touches from nature, of course it doesn't spoil anything.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

Une peinture, c'est d'abord un produit de l'imagination de l'artiste, ce ne doit jamais être une copie. Si, ensuite, on peut y ajouter deux ou trois accents de nature, evidemment ca ne fait pas de mal.
Quoted by Maurice Sérullaz, L'univers de Degas (H. Scrépel, 1979), p. 13
quotes, undated

Imagination, Nature, Painting

“We even copied the way the Americans walked, though Father Leonard didn't like that bit of admiration. He disapproved of rolling buttocks.”

Tom Baker (1934) English actor

Way

“Strain your brain more than your eye… You can copy a thing to a certain limit. Then you must use intellect.”

Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) American painter

Advice to his art students; quoted in Lloyd Goodrich, Thomas Eakins (1933).

“England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Isaac McPherson (13 August 1813)
1810s

Law, Idea, Personality, Country

“It is fitting that a discourse on Romantic music should commence with a meditation on the art of Bach. The Bach revival is still sometimes considered an early nineteenth-century phenomenon, although this is hardly tenable: in the 1780s Mozart was deeply affected by Bach, and at the same time Beethoven was being brought up on the Well-Tempered Keyboard. Bach was well known to European musicians as a composer of keyboard music through manuscript copies of this work long before systematic publication began in 1800. The "revival" of Bach in the Romantic period was basically a rediscovery of his choral works and a new evaluation of his technique: his art was no longer simply a model for the fugue, as it had been in the eyes of Mozart, but for the art of music as a whole. The new approach to Bach and to Baroque music in general, however, did not extend to the sound of that music on the original instruments. Few musicians in the 1820s and '30s 'had the slightest interest in the sonority of old harpsichords or Baroque organs (Ignaz Moscheles was an engaging exception). What they saw, and needed to see, in Bach was the achievement of an ideal.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 1 : Music and Sound

Art, Music, Time

“It is quite likely that it is possible, yes. But what we've said all along -- speaking for both the (Roslin) Institute and the PPL staff - is that we would find it ethically unacceptable to think of doing that. We can't think of a reason to do it. If there was a reason to copy a human being, we would do it, but there isn't.”

Ian Wilmut (1944) embryologist

On human cloning, in "Dr. Frankenstein, I Presume?" by Andrew Ross in Salon February 1997) http://web.archive.org/web/20000301033550/http://www.salon.com/feb97/news/news2970224.html.

Thinking

“(When asked who the three finest old time guitarists were) Well, I would have to pick Travis, you know; I think he's a great man with his music, and there's been many a man that's copied from Merle. You know, they say he learned from a man in Kentucky. Well, I know this Mose Rager he learned from, he learned from Arnold Shultz, the man I speak of, a colored man, in playing the blues. So I think it all leads back to this old colored man back in Kentucky.”

Bill Monroe (1911–1996) American bluegrass musician

Music, Color, Thinking, Learning

“2000
Louisiana, U. S. A.

Graphic novelist: Down here I discover that “The Christian Defense League” is distributing copies of “The International Jew,” which Henry Ford published years ago!
Man smoking pipe: Not only here!! Recently in Lebanon, the brother of the late president of Egypt, Nasser, published a Lebanese edition of the “Protocols!””

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

“Is it truely the case that we have to copy every dirt that comes from the west? I think, comrades, with the monotonism of the yeah yeah yeah and how that all is called should we make a stop.”

Walter Ulbricht (1893–1973) German politician

Ist es denn wirklich so, dass wir jeden Dreck, der vom Westen kommt, nu kopieren müssen? Ich denke, Genossen, mit der Monotonie des Je-Je-Je, und wie das alles heißt, ja, sollte man doch Schluss machen. In 1965 at the 11. congress of the central comitee of the SED refering to the "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah" of the Beatles and against the Rockmusic from the west in general http://home.arcor.de/a3b4v5/intro.mp3

Thinking

“The Success. The German Bible of Luther was saluted with the greatest enthusiasm, and became the most powerful help to the Reformation. Duke George of Saxony, Duke William of Bavaria, and Archduke Ferdinand of Austria strictly prohibited the sale in their dominions, but could not stay the current. Hans Lufft at Wittenberg printed and sold in forty years (between 1534 and 1574) about a hundred thousand copies,—an enormous number for that age,—and these were read by millions. The number of copies from reprints is beyond estimate.
Cochlaeus, the champion of Romanism, paid the translation the greatest compliment when he complained that "Luther's New Testament was so much multiplied and spread by printers that even tailors and shoemakers, yea, even women and ignorant persons who had accepted this new Lutheran gospel, and could read a little German, studied it with the greatest avidity as the fountain of all truth. Some committed it to memory, and carried it about in their bosom. In a few months such people deemed themselves so learned that they were not ashamed to dispute about faith and the gospel not only with Catholic laymen, but even with priests and monks and doctors of divinity."”

Philip Schaff (1819–1893) American Calvinist theologian

Luther's Bible club

Women, People, Truth, Age

“It is over twenty years since I first heard of Hong-lou meng and the great fascination it holds for its readers (despite the fact that there has never been a complete or definitive text). I was once lucky enough to borrow a copy from a friend. Reading it (in this incomplete state) was indeed a tantalizing experience.
In the spring of this year, my friend Cheng Weiyuan came to see me and showed me the complete text that he had purchased. 'This,' he said, 'is the fruit of my labours over several years. Bit by bit I have pieced it together, with a view to publishing it for fellow-lovers of the novel. As you are at a bit of a loose end, and in need of a restorative, will you share the labour [of preparing the manuscript for the press] with me?'
Although it was only a novel, the book contained nothing contrary to the tenets of Confucian teaching, and so I gladly accepted, and fell upon the task with the eagerness of the Persian slave when he saw his pearl! Now that the work is done, I have described these circumstances for the reader's information.”

Gao E (writer)

Preface (dated 27 December 1791) to the first Cheng-Gao edition of Dream of the Red Chamber, as translated by John Minford in The Story of the Stone: The Debt of Tears (Penguin, 1979), Appendix I, p. 386

Books, Spring, Lovers, Reading

“The young artists of to-day understand nothing; they copy to satiety the classic ornaments and designs, and reproduce them in so cold a manner that they lose all meaning. The ancients obtained their designs from nature. They found their models in the garden, even in the vegetable garden. They drew their inspiration from its source. The cabbage-leaf, the oak-leaf, the clover, the thistle, and the brier are the motives of the Gothic capital. It is not photographic truth, but living truth, that we must seek in art.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Rodin : the man and his art, with leaves from his notebook, 1917, p. 125

Truth, Art, Motivation, Understanding

“The writer, and co-laborers, proclaimed the fact of the Lord's presence, demonstrating it from prophecy, and on charts or tables, such as are used in this book, until the fall of 1878, when arrangements were made for starting our present publication, ZION'S WATCH TOWER, and Herald of Christ's Presence. By the Lord's blessing, millions of copies of this publication have carried abroad the tidings that the time is fulfilled, and that the Kingdom of Christ is even now being set up, while the kingdoms and systems of men are crumbling to their utter destruction.”

Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916) Founder of the Bible Student Movement

Source: Milennial Dawn, Vol. III: Thy Kingdom Come (1891), p. 93.

Men, Books, Time, Christ

“From the start, the prose in my Hank books copied the storytelling techniques of ranchers and cowboys, which means it was heavily influenced by an oral tradition. It was a natural and easy step to move from reading my stories aloud to audiences in Perryton, to recording them in a studio in Amarillo. The Hank audios have the feel of the radio programs I listened to in the fifties: character voices, background music, and sound effects.”

John R. Erickson (1942) American author

John R. Erickson on the discipline of writing, the world of publishing, and (of course) dogs http://www.lonestarliterary.com/john-r.-erickson-061415.html (June 14, 2015)

Books, Music, Feeling, Nature

“Martin, rather than step into the spotlight, would prefer to die in an unarmed attack on the power station supplying its electric current. His genuine modesty is the main reason for the fateful discrepancy between him and the journalistic literary sexton beetles who make copy out of him: they would like to receive the degree of attention that he would like to avoid, and the clearer it becomes that he would like to avoid it, the more they resent him for failing to appreciate their generosity.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

On Martin Amis, p. 205
Memoirs, North Face of Soho (2006)

Fate