A Quote by Oscar Wilde

Imitation is the homage mediocrity pays to greatness.

Oscar Wilde

Quote Topics

Greatness Homage Imitation Mediocrity Pays

Quote Author

Oscar Wilde
Irish - Poet
October 16, 1854 - November 30, 1900

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.

Oscar Wilde

Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Fraud is the homage that force pays to reason.

Charles Curtis

For I think it is the case with genius that it is not when quiescent so very much above mediocrity as the difference between the two might lead us to think, but that it has the power and privilege of rising from that level to a height utterly far from mediocrity: in other words that its greatness is that it can be so great.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Truth is an homage that the good man pays to his own dignity.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.

Fulton J. Sheen

It's easy to deprecate some of the puffery and jingoism that often go with affirmations of 'American greatness.' It's also easy to confuse greatness with perfection, as if evidence of our shortcomings is proof of our mediocrity.

Bret Stephens

Jealousy is the tribute which mediocrity pays to genius.

Fulton J. Sheen

Caricature is the tribute which mediocrity pays to genius.

Oscar Wilde

Satan promises the best, but pays with the worst; he promises honor, and pays with disgrace; he promises pleasure, and pays with pain; he promises profit, and pays with loss, he promises life, and pays with death. But God pays as he promises; all his payments are made in pure gold.

Thomas Brooks

Probably I, like a lot of people, became a writer in imitation of or in homage to the books I enjoyed. When you're so captivated by something, you think, could I do that? Hmm, let me try

Curtis Sittenfeld

Probably I, like a lot of people, became a writer in imitation of or in homage to the books I enjoyed. When you're so captivated by something, you think, could I do that? Hmm, let me try.

Curtis Sittenfeld

Mediocrity in politics is not to be despised. Greatness is not needed.

Hans Magnus Enzensberger

Homage to Michael Snow's environmental sculpture 'Blind.' The film proposes analogies, in imitation of 3 historic montage styles, for three perceptual modes mimed by that work.