Motivational Quotes

Genius

Genius is an African who dreams up snow.

- Nabokov, Vladimir

Best Quotes about Genius

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

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

Wilde, Oscar

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

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

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

Aragon, Louis

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

Dahlberg, Edward

10.

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

11.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

12.

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

Stein, Gertrude

13.

The divine egoism hat is genius.

Webb, Mary

14.

We are all geniuses up to the age of ten.

Huxley, Aldous

15.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

16.

Talent is a flame. Genius is a fire.

Williams, Bern

17.

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

Heine, Heinrich

18.

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

Holland, Josiah Gilbert

19.

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

20.

Genius is nothing more than inflamed enthusiasm.

21.

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

Stael, Germaine De

22.

Accept your genius and say what you think.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

23.

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

Hedge, Francis Herbert

24.

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

25.

Genius is an African who dreams up snow.

Nabokov, Vladimir

26.

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

Ceran, C. W.

27.

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.

28.

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

29.

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.

30.

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

31.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

32.

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

36.

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

William Hazlitt

37.

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

Hume, David

38.

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

39.

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

40.

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

41.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Welles, Orson

45.

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

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.

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

Pound, Ezra

48.

Genius is independent of situation.

Churchill, Charles

49.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

50.

Every man is a potential genius until he does something.