Motivational Quotes

Genius

Everyone is born with genius, but most people only keep it a few minutes.

- Edgard Varese

Best Quotes about Genius

When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.

Amiel, Henri Frederic

One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius.

Beauvoir, Simone De

Saying that a great genius is mad, while at the same time recognizing his artistic worth, is like saying that he had rheumatism or suffered from diabetes. Madness, in fact, is a medical term that can claim no more notice from the objective critic than he grants the charge of heresy raised by the theologian, or the charge of immorality raised by the police.

Joyce, James

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

Oscar Wilde

What makes men of genius, or rather, what they make, is not new ideas, it is that idea -- possessing them -- that what has been said has still not been said enough.

Delacroix, Eugene

The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.

Picasso, Pablo

Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.

Amiel, Henri Frederic

All the means of action -- the shapeless masses -- the materials -- lie everywhere about us. What we need is the celestial fire to change the flint into the transparent crystal, bright and clear. That fire is genius.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

10.

The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds.

Hume, David

11.

The greatest genius will never be worth much if he pretends to draw exclusively from his own resources.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

12.

Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labor in it, but they labor in it because they excel.

William Hazlitt

13.

All of us, you, your children, your neighbors and their children are everyday geniuses, even though the fact is unnoticed and unremembered by everyone. That's probably because school hasn't encouraged us to notice what's hidden inside us waiting for the right environment to express itself.

Kline, Peter

14.

Genius is, to be sure, not a matter of arbitrariness, but rather of freedom, just as wit, love, and faith, which once shall become arts and disciplines. We should demand genius from everybody, without, however, expecting it.

Schlegel, Friedrich

15.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

Seneca

16.

The drafts which true genius draws upon posterity, although they may not always be honored so soon as they are due, are sure to be paid with compound interest in the end.

Colton, Charles Caleb

17.

It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.

Stein, Gertrude

18.

Genius is the ability to act rightly without precedent -- the power to do the right thing the first time.

Hubbard, Elbert

19.

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.

Wilde, Oscar

20.

The first and last thing required of genius is, love of the truth.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

21.

What I do not like about our definitions of genius is that there is in them nothing of the day of judgment, nothing of resounding through eternity and nothing of the footsteps of the Almighty.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

22.

Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.

Woolf, Virginia

23.

Every man is a potential genius until he does something.

Tree, Sir Herbert Beerbohm

24.

Genius is of no country.

Charles Churchill

25.

Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought.

Weil, Simone

26.

Everybody denies I am a genius --but nobody ever called me one!

Welles, Orson

27.

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

Edison, Thomas A.

28.

Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

29.

Everyone is born with genius, but most people only keep it a few minutes.

Edgard Varese

30.

As it must not, so genius cannot be lawless; for it is even that constitutes its genius -- the power of acting creatively under laws of its own origination.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

31.

To see things in the seed is genius.

Lao-Tzu

32.

Every person of genius is considerably helped by being dead.

Lund, Robert S.

33.

There is one subtle but important difference between genius and stupidity and that is that genius has its limits. You'll see yourself clearest in the eyes of your friends.

34.

Genius is nothing more than inflamed enthusiasm.

35.

Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.

Da Vinci, Leonardo

36.

Talent is a faculty that is highly developed, but genius commands all the faculties.

Hedge, Francis Herbert

37.

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

Carl Sagan

38.

Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

39.

One of the satisfactions of a genius is his will-power and obstinacy.

Ray, Man

40.

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

41.

The greatest genius is the most indebted person.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

42.

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

43.

Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple.

Ceran, C. W.

44.

What is genius but the power of expressing a new individuality?

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

45.

Genius is a promontory jutting out into the infinite.

Hugo, Victor

46.

A man of genius has a right to any mode of expression.

Pound, Ezra

47.

His genius he was quite content in one brief sentence to define; Of inspiration one percent, of perspiration, ninety nine.

Edison, Thomas A.

48.

What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the right road empirically, following one's nose, taking shortcuts.

Calvino, Italo

49.

Genius is independent of situation.

Churchill, Charles

50.

Everybody hates a prodigy, detests an old head on young shoulders.

Erasmus, Desiderius