Motivational Quotes

Genius

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

Best Quotes about Genius

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

Ray, Man

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

James, William

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

Hume, David

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.

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

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

Oscar Levant

Genius is nothing more than inflamed enthusiasm.

Genius is a promontory jutting out into the infinite.

Hugo, Victor

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

William Hazlitt

10.

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

Stael, Germaine De

11.

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

Edgard Varese

12.

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

Oscar Wilde

13.

Every person of genius is considerably helped by being dead.

Lund, Robert S.

14.

To see things in the seed is genius.

Lao-Tzu

15.

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

16.

Genius is sorrow's child.

Adams, John

17.

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

Child, Lydia M.

18.

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

19.

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

Wilde, Oscar

20.

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

21.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

22.

There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.

Aristotle

23.

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.

24.

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

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

25.

The greatest genius is the most indebted person.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

26.

Genius is nothing but a great capacity for patience.

Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc

27.

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

28.

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

Hedge, Francis Herbert

29.

The divine egoism hat is genius.

Webb, Mary

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Pound, Ezra

35.

True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.

Churchill, Winston

36.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

37.

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

Weil, Simone

38.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

39.

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

40.

Genius is an African who dreams up snow.

Nabokov, Vladimir

41.

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

Holland, Josiah Gilbert

42.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

43.

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

Beauvoir, Simone De

44.

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

Penney, J. C. (James Cash)

45.

Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.

Woolf, Virginia

46.

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

47.

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

48.

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

49.

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