Motivational Quotes

Genius

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

- Auden, W. H.

Best Quotes about Genius

Genius is a promontory jutting out into the infinite.

Hugo, Victor

Every person of genius is considerably helped by being dead.

Lund, Robert S.

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

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

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.

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

Thomajan, Puzant Kevork

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.

Picasso, Pablo

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

Holland, Josiah Gilbert

10.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

11.

The greatest genius is the most indebted person.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

12.

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

13.

To see things in the seed is genius.

Lao-Tzu

14.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

15.

Accept your genius and say what you think.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

16.

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

17.

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

Weil, Simone

18.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

19.

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

Wilde, Oscar

20.

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

Child, Lydia M.

21.

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

22.

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

23.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

Seneca

24.

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.

25.

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

26.

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

Edgard Varese

27.

Genius is independent of situation.

Churchill, Charles

28.

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

Ray, Man

29.

Genius is an African who dreams up snow.

Nabokov, Vladimir

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.

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

Welles, Orson

32.

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

33.

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

Heine, Heinrich

34.

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

Lewes, George Henry

35.

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

Oscar Wilde

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Koestler, Arthur

39.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

40.

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

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

41.

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

Penney, J. C. (James Cash)

42.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

43.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

44.

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.

45.

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

Stael, Germaine De

46.

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

47.

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

Aragon, Louis

48.

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