I was thinking that the artists who have a sufficiently vigorous style are the ones to be most excused from exact imitation.

— Eugène Delacroix, I, 209 – Friday, January 25, 1850

Sources:

These quotations are taken from two different translations of the original French publication. After each quotation I refer to the edition used with a Roman numeral, and the respective page number with a regular numerical character.

I – The Journal of Eugène Delacroix
Translated from the French by Walter Pach, Crown Publishers, New York, 1948

II – The Journal of Eugène Delacroix
Translated by Lucy Norton and Hubert Wellington, 3rd Revised edition 1995, Phaidon Press, ISBN-13: 978-0714833590