Motivational Quotes

Genius

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

Best Quotes about Genius

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

The divine egoism hat is genius.

Webb, Mary

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

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

Ray, Man

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.

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

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

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

Hubbard, Elbert

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

Adams, Joey Lauren

10.

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

11.

Every man is a potential genius until he does something.

Tree, Sir Herbert Beerbohm

12.

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

Ceran, C. W.

13.

Genius is nothing but a great capacity for patience.

Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc

14.

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.

Beerbohm, Sir Max

15.

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

Oscar Levant

16.

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

17.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

18.

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

Penney, J. C. (James Cash)

19.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

20.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

21.

The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.

Picasso, Pablo

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

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

Koestler, Arthur

28.

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

Lewes, George Henry

29.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

30.

Every person of genius is considerably helped by being dead.

Lund, Robert S.

31.

Talent is a flame. Genius is a fire.

Williams, Bern

32.

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

Child, Lydia M.

33.

Genius is sorrow's child.

Adams, John

34.

Genius is a promontory jutting out into the infinite.

Hugo, Victor

35.

Genius is an African who dreams up snow.

Nabokov, Vladimir

36.

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

37.

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

Dahlberg, Edward

38.

There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.

Aristotle

39.

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

Stein, Gertrude

40.

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

James, William

41.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

42.

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

43.

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.

44.

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

45.

Genius is nothing more than inflamed enthusiasm.

46.

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

47.

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

Wilde, Oscar

48.

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.

49.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

Seneca

50.

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

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett