Meaning:
Its literal meaning.
Background:
The first of these alternate versions is found in a biography of Marcus
Aurelius by Jeremy Collier and Andr Dacier, titled Emperor Marcus Antoninus
his conversation with himself, 1708:
You should consider that Imitation is the most acceptable part of Worship,
and that the Gods had much rather Mankind should Resemble, than Flatter
them.
A nearer stab at the current version comes in a piece by the English writer
Eustace Budgell in the newspaper The Spectator No. 605, October 1714:
Imitation is a kind of artless Flattery.
The full monty as far as this proverb is concerned was given by Charles Caleb
Colton, in Lacon: or, Many things in few words, 1820:
Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.
Colton was expressing the same idea as Budgell, in that, to imitate is to
flatter without necessarily being aware one is flattering. As such, that
`artless' appreciation has to be `sincere'.
- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]
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This seems what we do on the jiu-jitsu mat. Each class, the instructor awes us
with a few techniques. Some, even shown three times, are still hard to imitate,
let alone applied in sparring. Some solo drills took months to master.
Through the snail-paced progress, my teachers have always been patient and
helpful. I'm very thankful but that must be it, that constantly being
imitated/flattered must be the main attraction of the teaching profession.
