18.11.07

Little Treatise on Plagiarism


Very often my beliefs have been best expressed by others, and this is not an admission but an acknowledgement, since only a humble man will plagiarise. The less of myself, the better! The whole thing is, the difficult matter, to shrink back to this: We are small, and cannot bear much improvement. Did not even St. Paul the Apostle name himself “Little Thing”? Tell me, ye learned, shall we for ever be adding so much to the bulk — so little to the stock?


Consider Alan Smithee. To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences is no crime, but service. Among so many borrowed things, be glad to steal one, disguising and altering it, to do such business in the massy entrails of the Earth, that no man may accuse or judge you, and that no page will stand up against you, saying, “You are a thief.”

We are all debtors, imitators, copyists writ large. This is my Last Will and Testament. The devil you
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