People are continually accusing me of borrowing other men's thoughts, & not confessing the obligation. I don't think there is anything of which I am more utterly incapable than of this meaness - but it is very difficult always to know how much one is indebted to other people - and it is always most difficult to explain to others the degree in which a stronger mind may guide you - without your having at least intentionally, borrowed this or the other definite thought. The fact is, it is very possible for two people to hit sometimes on the same thought - and I have over and over again been somewhat vexed as well as surprised at finding that what I really had and knew I had, worked out for myself, corresponded very closely to things that you had said much better.
Letter from John Ruskin to Thomas Carlyle Monday 23rd January 1855. from:The correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin ed by George Allan Cate, Stanford University Press, 1982
