Motivational Quotes

Genius

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

- William Hazlitt

Best Quotes about Genius

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

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

Picasso, Pablo

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

William Hazlitt

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.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

Every man is a potential genius until he does something.

Tree, Sir Herbert Beerbohm

There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.

Aristotle

The divine egoism hat is genius.

Webb, Mary

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

Beauvoir, Simone De

10.

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

11.

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

Ceran, C. W.

12.

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

Koestler, Arthur

13.

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

Hume, David

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Hedge, Francis Herbert

17.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

18.

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

Oscar Levant

19.

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

Pound, Ezra

20.

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

Penney, J. C. (James Cash)

21.

Genius is nothing more than inflamed enthusiasm.

22.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

23.

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

24.

The greatest genius is the most indebted person.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

25.

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

26.

Genius is of no country.

Charles Churchill

27.

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

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

28.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

29.

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

30.

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

31.

Genius hath electric power which earth can never tame.

Lydia M. Child

32.

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

33.

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

Stein, Gertrude

34.

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

Oscar Wilde

35.

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

36.

We are all geniuses up to the age of ten.

Huxley, Aldous

37.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

38.

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

Thomajan, Puzant Kevork

39.

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

Stael, Germaine De

40.

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

41.

The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.

Picasso, Pablo

42.

Genius is a promontory jutting out into the infinite.

Hugo, Victor

43.

Accept your genius and say what you think.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

48.

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

Lowell, James Russell

49.

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

50.

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.