When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies, "Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life
A quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson
From the source
Letters and Social Aims. Quotation and Originality.
Recorded in John Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, ninth edition, 1905 printing.