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Doing easily what others find it difficult is talent; doing what
is impossible for talent is genius.
Author: Henri-Frederic Amiel
Source: Journal
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There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.
[Lat., Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementia.]
Author: Aristotle
Source: quoted by Burton's in "Anatomy of Melancholy"
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As diamond cuts diamond, and one hone smooths a second, all the
parts of intellect are whetstones to each other; and genius,
which is but the result of their mutual sharpening, is character
too.
Author: Cyrus Augustus Bartol
Source: Radical Problems--Individualism
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Genius is only patience.
[Fr., Le Genie, c'est la patience.]
Author: George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon
Source: as quoted by Madame de Stael in A. Steven's "Study of the Life and Times of Mme. de Stael"
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Genius . . . means the transcendent capacity of taking trouble.
Author: Thomas Carlyle
Source: Frederick the Great (bk. IV, ch. III)
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Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius.
Author: Benjamin Disraeli
Source: Contarini Fleming (pt. IV, ch. 5)
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Fortune has rarely condescended to be the companion of genius.
Author: Isaac D'Israeli
Source: Curiosities of Literature--Poverty of the Learned
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Many men of genius must arise before a particular man of genius
can appear.
Author: Isaac D'Israeli
Source: Literary Character of Men of Genius
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To think, and to feel, constitute the two grand divisions of men
of genius--the men of reasoning and the men of imagination.
Author: Isaac D'Israeli
Source: Literary Character of Men of Genius (ch. II)
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Philosophy becomes poetry, and science imagination, in the
enthusiasm of genius.
Author: Isaac D'Israeli
Source: Literary Character of Men of Genius (ch. XII)
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Every work of Genius is tinctured by the feelings, and often
originates in the events of times.
Author: Isaac D'Israeli
Source: Literary Character of Men of Genius (ch. XXV)
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But genius must be born, and never can be taught.
Author: John Dryden
Source: Epistle X--To Congreve (l. 60)
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Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent
perspiration.
Author: John Dryden
Source: Epistle X--To Congreve (l. 60)
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Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.
It takes a touch of genius--and a lot of courage--to move in the
opposite direction.
Author: John Dryden
Source: Epistle X--To Congreve (l. 60)
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Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more
complex. . . . It takes a touch of genius--and a lot of courage
to move in the opposite direction.
Author: John Dryden
Source: Epistle X--To Congreve (l. 60)
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When Nature has work to be done, she create a genius to do it.
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source: Method of Nature
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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.
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source: Race
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Vivutur ingenio, that damn'd motto there
Seduced me first to me a wicked player.
Author: George Farquhar
Source: Love and a Bottle (epilogue written and spoken by Joseph Haynes)
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Genius and its rewards are briefly told:
A liberal nature and a niggard doom,
A difficult journey to a splendid tomb.
Author: John Forster
Source: Dedication of the Life and Adventures of Oliver Goldsmith
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Genius is the power of lighting one's own fire.
Author: John Forster
Source: Dedication of the Life and Adventures of Oliver Goldsmith
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The first and last thing required of genius is the love of truth.
[Ger., Das erste und letzte, was vom Genie gefordert wird, ist
Wahreits-Liebe.]
Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Source: Spruche in Prosa (III)
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Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such
We scarcely can praise it or blame it too much;
Who, born for the universe, narrow'd his mind,
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.
Author: Oliver Goldsmith
Source: Retaliation (l. 29)
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Perhaps, moreover, he whose genius appears deepest and truest
excels his fellows in nothing save the knack of expression; he
throws out occasionally a lucky hint at truths of which every
human soul is profoundly though unutterably conscious.
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
Source: Mosses from an Old Manse--The Procession of Life
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Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use.
Author: William Hazlitt
Source: Table Talk--On Application to Study
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Nature is the master of talents; genius is the master of nature.
- Josiah Gilbert Holland (used pseudonym Timothy Titcomb),
Author: Josiah Gilbert Holland (used pseudonym Timothy Titcomb)
Source: Plain Talk on Familiar Subjects--Art and Life
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Genius is intensity. The man who gets anything worth having is the man who goes after his object as a bulldog goes after a cat - with every fiber in him tense with eagerness and determination.
Author: C. Holman
Source: None
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Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.
Author: Horace
Source: None
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Everyone is born with genius, but most people only keep it a few minutes.
Author: Edgard Varese
Source: None
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Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
Author: Elbert Hubbard
Source: None
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There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
Author: Oscar Lavant
Source: None
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The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
Author: Anonymous
Source: None
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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.
Author: Carl Sagan
Source: None
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Nobody in the game of football should be called a genius. A genius is somebody like Norman Einstein.
Author: Joe Theisman
Source: None
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The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
Author: Oscar Wilde
Source: None
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Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.
Author: E. F. Schumacher
Source: None
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Genius hath electric power which earth can never tame.
Author: Lydia M Child
Source: None
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Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Author: Albert Einstein
Source: None
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The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them which we are missing.
Author: Gamal Abdel Nasser
Source: None
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One of the strongest characteristics of genius is the power of lighting its own fire.
Author: John Watson Foster
Source: None
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Sometimes men come by the name of genius in the same way that certain insects come by the name of centipede--not because they have a hundred feet, but because most people can't count above fourteen.
Author: G. C. Lichtenberg
Source: None
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Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
Author: Vladimir Nabokov
Source: None
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True genius sees with the eyes of a child and thinks with the brain of a genii.
Author: Puzant Kevork Thomajan
Source: None
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Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, But Genius must be born; and never can be taught.
Author: John Dryden
Source: None
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Genius is the ability to act rightly without precedent--the power to do the right thing the first time.
Author: Elbert Hubbard
Source: None
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Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.
Author: Joseph Joubert
Source: None
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Genius is an infinite capacity for taking life by the scruff of the neck.
Author: Christopher Quill
Source: None
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When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source: None
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In every work of genius we recognise our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source: None
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Genius does what it must, and talent does what it can.
Author: Edward G. Bulwer-lytton
Source: None
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It is the privilege of genius that to it life never grows commonplace as to the rest of us.
Author: James Russell Lowell
Source: None
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