Motivational Quotes

Genius

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

Best Quotes about Genius

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

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

Hedge, Francis Herbert

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

A genius is one who can do anything except make a living.

Adams, Joey Lauren

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

Edison, Thomas A.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

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

Thomajan, Puzant Kevork

Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds.

Samuel Butler

10.

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

Ray, Man

11.

Genius is nothing more than inflamed enthusiasm.

12.

Talent is a flame. Genius is a fire.

Williams, Bern

13.

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.

14.

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.

15.

Genius is sorrow's child.

Adams, John

16.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

17.

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

18.

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

Edgard Varese

19.

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

Wilde, Oscar

20.

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

Auden, W. H.

21.

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

22.

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

Beauvoir, Simone De

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

26.

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

Hume, David

27.

The divine egoism hat is genius.

Webb, Mary

28.

The real people of genius were resolute workers not idle dreamers.

Lewes, George Henry

29.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

30.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

31.

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

32.

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

Weil, Simone

33.

It is personality with a penny's worth of talent. Error which chances to rise above the commonplace.

Picasso, Pablo

34.

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

Oscar Wilde

35.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

Seneca

36.

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

Stael, Germaine De

37.

Every person of genius is considerably helped by being dead.

Lund, Robert S.

38.

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

39.

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

James, William

40.

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

41.

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

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.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

44.

Joyce, James

45.

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

46.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

47.

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

Holland, Josiah Gilbert

48.

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

William Hazlitt

49.

Men of genius are not quick judges of character. Deep thinking and high imagining blunt that trivial instinct by which you and I size people up.