Motivational Quotes

Genius

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

- Ray, Man

Best Quotes about Genius

Genius is an African who dreams up snow.

Nabokov, Vladimir

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

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.

The divine egoism hat is genius.

Webb, Mary

Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds.

Samuel Butler

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

Lowell, James Russell

Genius hath electric power which earth can never tame.

Lydia M. Child

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

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

10.

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

Aragon, Louis

11.

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

Wilde, Oscar

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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.

15.

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

16.

Genius is nothing but a great capacity for patience.

Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc

17.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

18.

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

James, William

19.

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

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

20.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

21.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

22.

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

Child, Lydia M.

23.

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

Ray, Man

24.

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

25.

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

Wilde, Oscar

26.

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

Heine, Heinrich

27.

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

28.

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

Koestler, Arthur

29.

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.

30.

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

31.

Accept your genius and say what you think.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

32.

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

33.

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

Edgard Varese

34.

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

Oscar Wilde

35.

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

36.

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

Weil, Simone

37.

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

38.

Genius is a promontory jutting out into the infinite.

Hugo, Victor

39.

We are all geniuses up to the age of ten.

Huxley, Aldous

40.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

41.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

42.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

Seneca

43.

Every person of genius is considerably helped by being dead.

Lund, Robert S.

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.

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.

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

Da Vinci, Leonardo

47.

The greatest genius is the most indebted person.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

48.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

49.

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.