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

The principal mark of genius is not perfection, but originality.

Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.

Toil is man's allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that's more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.

There are some persons in this world, who, unable to give better proof of being wise, take a strange delight in showing what they think they have sagaciously read in mankind by uncharitable suspicions of them.