Copies

The only good copies are those which make us see the absurdity of bad originals.
- François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, 1613 - 1680

Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.
- Pablo Picasso, 1881 - 1973

Go and see what others have produced, but never copy anything except nature. You would be trying to enter into a temperament that is not yours and nothing that you would do would have any character.
- Pierre Auguste Renoir, 1841 - 1919

In every business, no matter how small or how large, someone is just around the corner forever trying to steal your ideas and build his success out of your imagination, struggling after that which you have toiled endless years to secure, striving to outdo you in each and every way. If such a competitor would work as hard to originate as he does to copy, he would much more quickly gain success.
- Alice Foote MacDougall, 1867 - 1945

After two hundred years most of the outlandish and monstrous ideas of [Shakespeare] have acquired the right to be considered sublime, and almost all modern authors have copied him.... It does not occur to people that they should not copy him, and the lack of success of their copies simply makes people think that he is inimitable.
- Voltaire (François Marie Arouet), 1694 - 1778