Motivational Quotes

Genius

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

- Erasmus, Desiderius

Best Quotes about Genius

Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an inhabitual way.

James, William

The divine egoism hat is genius.

Webb, Mary

Genius is a promontory jutting out into the infinite.

Hugo, Victor

Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

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

Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves.

Wilde, Oscar

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

The function of genius is not to give new answers, but to pose new questions which time and mediocrity can resolve.

Trevor-Roper, H. R.

10.

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

11.

Nothing is so envied as genius, nothing so hopeless of attainment by labor alone. Though labor always accompanies the greatest genius, without the intellectual gift labor alone will do little.

Hayden, B. R.

12.

To see things in the seed is genius.

Lao-Tzu

13.

The greatest genius is the most indebted person.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

14.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

15.

It is not because the touch of genius has roused genius to production, but because the admiration of genius has made talent ambitious, that the harvest is still so abundant.

Fuller, Margaret

16.

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

Stein, Gertrude

17.

Talent is a flame. Genius is a fire.

Williams, Bern

18.

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

19.

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

Ceran, C. W.

20.

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

Beauvoir, Simone De

21.

I really cannot know whether I am or am not the Genius you are pleased to call me, but I am very willing to put up with the mistake, if it be one. It is a title dearly enough bought by most men, to render it endurable, even when not quite clearly made out, which it never can be till the Posterity, whose decisions are merely dreams to ourselves, has sanctioned or denied it, while it can touch us no further.

Byron, Lord

22.

Genius, like truth, has a shabby and neglected mien.

Dahlberg, Edward

23.

We are all geniuses up to the age of ten.

Huxley, Aldous

24.

He was a genius - that is to say, a man who does superlatively and without obvious effort something that most people cannot do by the uttermost exertion of their abilities.

Robertson Davies

25.

Genius is of no country.

Charles Churchill

26.

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

Welles, Orson

27.

Men give me credit for some genius. All the genius I have is this. When I have a subject in mind. I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. My mind becomes pervaded with it... the effort which I have made is what people are pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought.

Hamilton, Alexander

28.

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

29.

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

Ray, Man

30.

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

31.

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

Wilde, Oscar

32.

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

Oscar Wilde

33.

There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.

Oscar Levant

34.

Genius is nothing but a great capacity for patience.

Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc

35.

Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

36.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

37.

Genius is nothing more than inflamed enthusiasm.

38.

Unpretending mediocrity is good, and genius is glorious; but a weak flavor of genius in an essentially common person is detestable. It spoils the grand neutrality of a commonplace character, as the rinsings of an unwashed wine-glass spoil a draught of fair water.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

39.

Who in the same given time can produce more than others has vigor; who can produce more and better, has talents; who can produce what none else can, has genius.

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

40.

Genius is independent of situation.

Churchill, Charles

41.

There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.

Aristotle

42.

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.

43.

We know that the nature of genius is to provide idiots with ideas twenty years later.

Aragon, Louis

44.

True genius sees with the eyes of a child and thinks with the brain of a genius.

Thomajan, Puzant Kevork

45.

Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

46.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

47.

Nature is the master of talents; genius is the master of nature.

Holland, Josiah Gilbert

48.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

49.

Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.

50.

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