Lily Hoang posted these quotes on HTML Giant. I’ve been aware of them and in some form everyone has heard them or at least will have soon enough to make the statement as close to truth as need be.
I am stealing her post now and only hoping that she doesn’t mind too much.
Alexandre Dumas said: The man of genius does not steal, he conquers.
And Robert Schumann said: Talent works, genius creates.
And Oscar Wilde said: Talent borrows; genius steals
And Pablo Picasso said: Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.
Or maybe Pablo Picasso said: The bad artists imitate, the great artists steal.
And Igor Stravinsky said: Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.
And T.S. Eliot said: One of the surest tests is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.
My response is as follows and I am stealing it from the comments section of same said blog –
I can’t find a way to agree with the statements without saying that I believe I am a thief.
Am I great or merely good? I don’t truly know and think I may possibly be fooling myself and my readers into thinking I am greater than a dead fly – but I do know that I steal like a master thief. It is one of my few vices.
Vices:
coffee
theft
sport fucking
mental illness
I did not steal her found image though and for that you will have to follow this link.
the platitudes of willful resemblance 