Motivational Quotes

Genius

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

Best Quotes about Genius

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

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

Welles, Orson

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

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

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

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.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

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

Hubbard, Elbert

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

10.

There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.

Aristotle

11.

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.

12.

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

13.

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

Holland, Josiah Gilbert

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

18.

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

Auden, W. H.

19.

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

20.

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

21.

As it must not, so genius cannot be lawless; for it is even that constitutes its genius -- the power of acting creatively under laws of its own origination.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

22.

Accept your genius and say what you think.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

23.

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

24.

The divine egoism hat is genius.

Webb, Mary

25.

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

26.

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

Adams, Joey Lauren

27.

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

Picasso, Pablo

28.

Genius is independent of situation.

Churchill, Charles

29.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

30.

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

James, William

31.

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

Child, Lydia M.

32.

The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.

Picasso, Pablo

33.

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

Wilde, Oscar

34.

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

Stael, Germaine De

35.

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

Ray, Man

36.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

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.

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.

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

Aragon, Louis

40.

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

William Hazlitt

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.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

43.

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

Dahlberg, Edward

44.

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

Lewes, George Henry

45.

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

46.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

47.

Genius is of no country.

Charles Churchill

48.

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

Wilde, Oscar

49.

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

50.

Genius is nothing more than inflamed enthusiasm.