Motivational Quotes

Genius

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

Best Quotes about Genius

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

Stael, Germaine De

Genius hath electric power which earth can never tame.

Lydia M. Child

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Picasso, Pablo

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

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

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

Oscar Levant

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

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

Holland, Josiah Gilbert

10.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

11.

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

12.

Every person of genius is considerably helped by being dead.

Lund, Robert S.

13.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

14.

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

15.

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

Ceran, C. W.

16.

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

Aragon, Louis

17.

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

18.

We are all geniuses up to the age of ten.

Huxley, Aldous

19.

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

Ray, Man

20.

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

Thomajan, Puzant Kevork

21.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

22.

To see things in the seed is genius.

Lao-Tzu

23.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

24.

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

Weil, Simone

25.

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

James, William

26.

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

27.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

28.

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.

29.

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

30.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

Seneca

31.

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.

32.

Genius is sorrow's child.

Adams, John

33.

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

William Hazlitt

34.

What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the right road empirically, following one's nose, taking shortcuts.

Calvino, Italo

35.

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.

36.

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

Koestler, Arthur

37.

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

38.

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

Dahlberg, Edward

39.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

40.

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

Hume, David

41.

Byron, Lord

42.

The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.

Picasso, Pablo

43.

The divine egoism hat is genius.

Webb, Mary

44.

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

Adams, Joey Lauren

45.

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

46.

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

Pound, Ezra

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.

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

49.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

50.

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