Motivational Quotes

Genius

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

Best Quotes about Genius

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

Heine, Heinrich

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

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

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

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

Child, Lydia M.

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

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.

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

Lewes, George Henry

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

Koestler, Arthur

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

10.

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

Edgard Varese

11.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

12.

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

Penney, J. C. (James Cash)

13.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

14.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

15.

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

16.

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.

17.

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

Hedge, Francis Herbert

18.

Talent is a flame. Genius is a fire.

Williams, Bern

19.

Genius hath electric power which earth can never tame.

Lydia M. Child

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Pound, Ezra

23.

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

Hume, David

24.

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

25.

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

James, William

26.

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

27.

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

28.

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

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.

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

Auden, W. H.

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Fuller, Buckminster

34.

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

35.

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

William Hazlitt

36.

To see things in the seed is genius.

Lao-Tzu

37.

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

Ceran, C. W.

38.

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