Definition of Originality

Originality

The quality or state of being original.

Related Definitions:

Being, Of, Or, Original, Quality, State, The

Originality Quotations

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
C. S. Lewis

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.
Voltaire

A man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.
George Bernard Shaw

He's a man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.
George Bernard Shaw

The burden of originality is one that most people don't want to accept. They'd rather sit in front of the TV and let that tell them what they're supposed to like, what they're supposed to buy, and what they're supposed to laugh at.
Marilyn Manson

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
Herman Melville

Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.
John Stuart Mill

All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.
John Stuart Mill

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.
Blaise Pascal

Millions of men have lived to fight, build palaces and boundaries, shape destinies and societies; but the compelling force of all times has been the force of originality and creation profoundly affecting the roots of human spirit.
Ansel Adams

Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.
Thomas Carlyle

The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.
Thomas Carlyle

Nearly all our originality comes from the stamp that time impresses upon our sensibility.
Charles Baudelaire

Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.
W. H. Auden

The writer of originality, unless dead, is always shocking, scandalous; novelty disturbs and repels.
Simone de Beauvoir

Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature.
Jean Cocteau

Originality is really important.
Jim Carrey

The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger.
W. Somerset Maugham

Cinema reflects culture and there is no harm in adapting technology, but not at the cost of losing your originality.
Jackie Chan

About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.
Josh Billings

Most people think an artist tries to be original, but originality is the last thing that develops in the artist.
Lukas Foss

Originality is the art of concealing your source.
Franklin P. Jones

Originality is undetected plagiarism.
William Ralph Inge

I love romantic comedies. I like to watch them and I like to be in them. It's something that's increasingly difficult to find that spark of originality that makes if different than the ones that come before.
Julia Roberts

Because of this, originality consists in returning to the origin.
Antonio Gaudi

The secret of all effective originality in advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships.
Leo Burnett

Originality is not seen in single words or even in sentences. Originality is the sum total of a man's thinking or his writing.
Isaac Bashevis Singer

As a rule, I am very careful to be shallow and conventional where depth and originality are wasted.
Lucy Maud Montgomery

I thought I was clever enough to write as well as these people and I didn't realize that there is something called originality and your own voice.
Amy Tan