The original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.
L'écrivain original n'est pas celui qui n'imite personne, mais celui que personne ne peut imiter.
Original text (French)
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Source, in full
Le génie du Christianisme (The Genius of Christianity) (1802). This sentence has also been translated as: "The original style is not the style which never borrows of any one, but that which no other person is capable of reproducing" in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989), reporting translation by Charles I. White (1856, reprinted 1976), part 2, book 1, chapter 3, p. 221; and as "The original writer is not he who refrains from imitating others, but he who can be imitated by none". The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1979), 3d ed., p. 141.