Motivational Quotes

Genius

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.

Best Quotes about Genius

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

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Genius hath electric power which earth can never tame.

Lydia M. Child

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

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

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

Seneca

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

Edison, Thomas A.

10.

Geniuses themselves don't talk about the gift of genius, they just talk about hard work and long hours.

Penney, J. C. (James Cash)

11.

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

Stein, Gertrude

12.

Great genius takes shape by contact with another great genius, but, less by assimilation than by fiction.

Heine, Heinrich

13.

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

14.

Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.

Auden, W. H.

15.

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

Thomajan, Puzant Kevork

16.

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

Edgard Varese

17.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

18.

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

Hedge, Francis Herbert

19.

Rising genius always shoots out its rays from among the clouds, but these will gradually roll away and disappear as it ascends to its steady luster.

Irving, Washington

20.

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round heads in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them. Disagree with them. Glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enoughto think they can change the world
Are the ones who do.

Apple Computer

21.

The greatest genius is the most indebted person.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

22.

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.

23.

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

Oscar Wilde

24.

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

25.

Genius is nothing more than inflamed enthusiasm.

26.

When human power becomes so great and original that we can account for it only as a kind of divine imagination, we call it genius.

Crashaw, William

27.

The eye of genius has always a plaintive expression, and its natural language is pathos.

Child, Lydia M.

28.

Genius is sorrow's child.

Adams, John

29.

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

30.

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.

31.

Genius sits in a glass house -- but in an unbreakable one --conceiving ideas. After giving birth, it falls into madness. Stretches out its hand through the window toward the first person happening by. The demon's claw rips, the iron fist grips. Before, you were a model, mocks the ironic voice between serrated teeth, for me, you are raw material to work on. I throw you against the glass wall, so that you remain stuck there, projected and stuck. (Then come the lovers of art and contemplate the bleeding work from outside. Then come the photographers. New art, it says in the newspaper the following day. The learned journals give it a name that ends in ism.)

Klee, Paul

32.

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

33.

There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.

Aristotle

34.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

35.

To see things in the seed is genius.

Lao-Tzu

36.

Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it.

Stael, Germaine De

37.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

38.

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

Beauvoir, Simone De

39.

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.

40.

Genius is nothing but a great capacity for patience.

Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc

41.

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

42.

Every person of genius is considerably helped by being dead.

Lund, Robert S.

43.

It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.

Lowell, James Russell

44.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

45.

The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.

Koestler, Arthur

46.

True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.

Churchill, Winston

47.

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

Ceran, C. W.

48.

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

49.

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

Pound, Ezra

50.

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.