“Someone might object, "But you do not express yourself like Cicero". What of it? I am not Cicero. But I think I express my own self.”
Non exprimis, aliquis inquit, Ciceronem. Quid tum? Non enim sum Cicero; me tamen, ut opinor, exprimo.
Epistolae 8, 16. Quoted in Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance (1995) by Martin L. McLaughlin, p. 203.