Insist on yourself. Never imitate. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Art does not imitate, but interpret. [ Mazzini ]

In humility imitate Jesus and Socrates. [ Franklin ]

If you can't imitate him, don't copy him. [ Yogi Berra ]

The poor trying to imitate the powerful, perish. [ Phaedrus ]

The best way of revenge is not to imitate the injury. [ Marcus Aurelius ]

Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters. [ Swift ]

The mission of art is to represent nature not to imitate her. [ W. M. Hunt ]

We are all easily taught to imitate what is base and depraved. [ Juvenal ]

So true it is, that nature has caprices which, art cannot imitate. [ Macaulay ]

How much easier do we find it to commend a good action than to imitate it. [ Anon ]

Imitation is born with us, but what we ought to imitate is not easily found. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Children will imitate their fathers in their vices, seldom in their repentance. [ Spu rgeon ]

Emulation admires and strives to imitate great actions; envy is only moved to malice. [ Balzac ]

Not to enjoy one's youth, when one is young, is to imitate the miser who starves beside his treasures. [ Mme. Louise Colet ]

Imitate time; it destroys everything slowly; it undermines, it wears away, it detaches, it does not wrench. [ Joubert ]

The error of certain women is to imagine that, to acquire distinction, they must imitate the manners of men. [ J. de Maistre ]

At the age of sixty, to marry a beautiful girl of sixteen, is to imitate those ignorant people who buy books to be read by their friends. [ A. Ricard ]

It has long seemed to me that it would be more honorable to our ancestors to praise them in words less, but in deeds to imitate them more. [ Horace Mann ]

If you make a law against dancing-masters imitating the fine gentleman, you should with as much reason enact, that no fine gentleman shall imitate the dancing-master. [ Goldsmith ]

We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and insensibly approximate to the characters we most admire. In this way, a generous habit of thought and of action carries with it an incalculable influence. [ Bovee ]

Art does not imitate nature, but it founds itself on the study of nature, - takes from nature the selections which best accord with its own intention, and then bestows on them that which nature does not possess, viz. the mind and the soul of man. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]

Peacefully and reasonably to contemplate is at no time hurtful, and while we use ourselves to think of the advantages of others, our own mind comes insensibly to imitate them; and every false activity to which our fancy was alluring us is then willingly abandoned. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Style is the physiognomy of the mind. It is more infallible than that of the body. To imitate the style of another is said to be wearing a mask. However beautiful it may be, it is through its lifelessness insipid and intolerable, so that even the most ugly living face is more engaging. [ Schopenhauer ]

You will find it less easy to uproot faults than to choke them by gaining virtues. Do not think of your faults; still less of others faults. In every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong; honor that; rejoice in it ; as you can, try to imitate it, and your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes. [ Ruskin ]

The province of music is rather to express the passions and feelings of the human heart than the actions of men, or the operations of nature. When employed in the former capacity, it becomes an eloquent language; when in the latter, a mere mimic - an imitator, and a very miserable one - or rather a buffoon, caricaturing what it cannot imitate; the idea of the different stages of a battle, or the progress of a tempest being represented to the eye or the ear, or even the imagination, by the quavering of a fiddler's elbow, or the squeaking of catgut, is preposterous. [ G. P. Morris ]