Motivational Quotes

Genius

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

- Lewes, George Henry

Best Quotes about Genius

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

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

Dahlberg, Edward

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

Edison, Thomas A.

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

Hedge, Francis Herbert

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

Pound, Ezra

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

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

Stein, Gertrude

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

Talent is a flame. Genius is a fire.

Williams, Bern

10.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

11.

The divine egoism hat is genius.

Webb, Mary

12.

I'm not a genius. I'm just a tremendous bundle of experience.

Fuller, Buckminster

13.

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

14.

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

15.

Genius is nothing but a great capacity for patience.

Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc

16.

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

17.

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

Auden, W. H.

18.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

Seneca

19.

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

20.

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

Ceran, C. W.

21.

Genius is an African who dreams up snow.

Nabokov, Vladimir

22.

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

Edgard Varese

23.

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

Lewes, George Henry

24.

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

Beauvoir, Simone De

25.

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.

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

30.

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.

31.

The greatest genius is the most indebted person.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

32.

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

William Hazlitt

33.

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

34.

Accept your genius and say what you think.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

35.

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

Welles, Orson

36.

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

Samuel Butler

37.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

38.

Genius is nothing more than inflamed enthusiasm.

39.

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

40.

Genius is independent of situation.

Churchill, Charles

41.

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

42.

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

Child, Lydia M.

43.

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

44.

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

Oscar Levant

45.

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

Ray, Man

46.

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

47.

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.

48.

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.

49.

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

50.

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

Wilde, Oscar