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

In everything truth surpasses its imitation or copy. [ Cicero ]

Falsehood always endeavors to copy the mien and attitude of truth. [ Dr. Johnson ]

People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy after. [ Oliver Goldsmith ]

He had a head which statuaries loved to copy, and a foot the deformity of which the beggars in the streets mimicked. [ Macaulay ]

He that would be a master must draw from the life as well as copy from originals, and join theory and experience together. [ Jeremy Collier ]

You have to go below the surface of words and actually feel them. This helps you choose the just-right word for your copy. [ Kathy Kleidermacher, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Copywriter's Words And Phrases ]

Good poetry has a lot in common with good copy. A poem evokes vivid images and strong emotions through very careful word choice. [ Kathy Kleidermacher, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Copywriter's Words And Phrases ]

A friend is a rare book, of which but one copy is made. We read a page of it every day, till some woman snatches it from our hands, who sometimes peruses it, but more frequently tears it.

Genius invents fine manners, which the baron and the baroness copy very fast, and, by the advantage of a palace, better the instruction. They stereotype the lesson they have learned into a mode. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

The style of an author is a faithful copy of his mind. If you would write a lucid style, let there first be light in your own mind; and if you would write a grand style, you ought to have a grand character. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Generally speaking, an author's style is a faithful copy of his mind. If you would write a lucid style, let there first be light in your own mind; and if you would write a grand style, you ought to have a grand character. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

The drama is not a mere copy of nature, not a facsimile. It is the free running hand of genius, under the impression of its liveliest wit or most passionate impulses, a thousand times adorning or feeling all as it goes; and you must read it, as the healthy instinct of audiences almost always does, if the critics will let them alone, with a grain of allowance, and a tendency to go away with as much of it for use as is necessary, and the rest for the luxury of laughter, pity, or poetical admiration. [ Leigh Hunt ]