Daily Inspiration Quote by Thomas W. Higginson

Originality gets demoted from lightning strike to simple posture: look again, and look better. Higginson’s line is a quiet rebuke to the romantic myth of the solitary genius inventing ex nihilo. “Simply” does a lot of work here, stripping originality of mystique and handing it back to practice: attention, patience, and a willingness to see what everyone else walks past.

The “pair of fresh eyes” metaphor makes originality bodily and ordinary. Eyes tire; they inherit habits; they skim. Freshness isn’t moral purity so much as a reset of perception, the capacity to notice the overlooked angle, the unasked question, the small contradiction in what’s been accepted as settled. Higginson, as a clergyman in 19th-century America, is speaking from a culture obsessed with moral improvement and disciplined self-making. That context matters: this is less bohemian rebellion than Protestant pragmatism. You don’t need a new world; you need a renewed gaze on this one.

The subtext is also democratic. If originality is a way of seeing rather than a rare substance, it becomes accessible: not everyone can be a prodigy, but anyone can cultivate attention. At the same time, the phrase is gently scolding. If you’re unoriginal, the problem isn’t a lack of ideas; it’s a lazy, inherited way of looking. Higginson turns creativity into an ethical task: stay awake, resist cliché, and you’ll find novelty hiding in plain sight.