Quote: Genius is sorrow's child. Author: John Adams 1735-1826, Second President of the USA
Quote: It takes people a long time to learn the difference between talent and genius, especially ambitious young men and women. Author: Louisa May Alcott 1832-1888, American Author
Quote: Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius. Author: Henri Frederic Amiel 1821-1881, Swiss Philosopher, Poet, Critic
Quote: 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. Author: Henri Frederic Amiel 1821-1881, Swiss Philosopher, Poet, Critic
Quote: We know that the nature of genius is to provide idiots with ideas twenty years later. Author: Louis Aragon 1897-1982, French Poet
Quote: There is no great genius without a mixture of madness. Author: Aristotle BC 384-322, Greek Philosopher
Quote: There are big men, men of intellect, intellectual men, men of talent and men of action; but the great man is difficult to find, and it needs --apart from discernment --a certain greatness to find him. Author: Margot Asquith 1864-1945, British Socialite
Quote: Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do. Author: W. H. Auden 1907-1973, Anglo-American Poet
Quote: Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with man's physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed. Author: Charles Baudelaire 1821-1867, French Poet
Quote: Genius is childhood recaptured. Author: Jean Baudrillard French Postmodern Philosopher, Writer
Quote: One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius. Author: Simone de Beauvoir 1908-1986, French Novelist, Essayist
Quote: Genius unexerted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks. Author: Henry Ward Beecher 1813-1887, American Preacher, Orator, Writer
Quote: 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. Author: Sir Max Beerbohm 1872-1956, British Actor
Quote: Genius is the gold in the mine; talent is the miner who works and brings it out. Author: Marguerite Gardiner Blessington 1789-1849, Irish Writer and Socialite
Quote: Genius makes its observations in short-hand; talent writes them out at length. Author: Christian Nevell Bovee 1820-1904, American Author, Lawyer
Quote: Since when was genius found respectable? Author: Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1806-1861, British Poet
Quote: What is genius but the power of expressing a new individuality? Author: Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1806-1861, British Poet
Quote: Genius is nothing but a great capacity for patience. Author: Georges-Louis Leclerc Buffon 1707-1788, French Naturalist
Quote: Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius. Author: Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton 1803-1873, British Novelist, Poet
Quote: A genius can never expect to have a good time anywhere, if he is a genuine article, but America is about the last place in which life will be endurable at all for an inspired writer of any kind. Author: Samuel Butler 1612-1680, British Poet, Satirist
Quote: 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. Author: Lord Byron 1788-1824, British Poet
Quote: What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the right road empirically, following one's nose, taking shortcuts. Author: Italo Calvino 1923-1985, Cuban Writer, Essayist, Journalist
Quote: Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains. Author: Thomas Carlyle 1795-1881, Scottish Philosopher, Author
Quote: Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple. Author: C. W. Ceran
Quote: Passion holds up the bottom of the universe and genius paints up its roof. Author: Chao Chang
Quote: The eye of genius has always a plaintive expression, and its natural language is pathos. Author: Lydia M. Child 1802-1880, American Abolitionist, Writer, Editor
Quote: Genius is independent of situation. Author: Charles Churchill 1731-1764, British Poet, Satirist
Quote: True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information. Author: Winston Churchill 1874-1965, British Statesman, Prime Minister
Quote: 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. Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772-1834, British Poet, Critic, Philosopher
Quote: 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. Author: Charles Caleb Colton 1780-1832, British Sportsman Writer
Quote: 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. Author: William Crashaw
Quote: Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active. Author: Leonardo Da Vinci 1452-1519, Italian Inventor, Architect, Painter, Scientist, Sculptor
Quote: Genius, like truth, has a shabby and neglected mien. Author: Edward Dahlberg 1900-1977, American Author, Critic
Quote: Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them. Author: Robertson Davies 1913-, Canadian Novelist, Journalist
Quote: 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. Author: EugFne Delacroix 1798-1863, French Artist
Quote: Genius is present in every age, but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it flows forth. Author: Denis Diderot 1713-1784, French Philosopher
Quote: Genius, when young, is divine. Author: Benjamin Disraeli 1804-1881, British Statesman, Prime Minister
Quote: Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius. Author: Benjamin Disraeli 1804-1881, British Statesman, Prime Minister
Quote: Fortune has rarely condescended to be the companion of genius. Author: Isaac D'Israeli 1766-1848, British Critic, Historian
Quote: Genius must be born, and never can be taught. Author: John Dryden 1631-1700, British Poet, Dramatist, Critic
Quote: Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide. Author: John Dryden 1631-1700, British Poet, Dramatist, Critic
Quote: Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, but genius must be born; and never can be taught. Author: John Dryden 1631-1700, British Poet, Dramatist, Critic
Quote: Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. Author: Thomas A. Edison 1847-1931, American Inventor, Entrepreneur, Founder of GE
Quote: His genius he was quite content in one brief sentence to define; Of inspiration one percent, of perspiration, ninety nine. Author: Thomas A. Edison 1847-1931, American Inventor, Entrepreneur, Founder of GE
Quote: Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline. Author: George Eliot 1819-1880, British Novelist
Quote: A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness. Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist
Quote: Accept your genius and say what you think. Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist
Quote: Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer. Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist
Quote: In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist
Quote: Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor. Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist
Quote: The greatest genius is the most indebted person. Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist
Quote: 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 1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist
Quote: To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men -- that is genius. Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist
Quote: When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it. Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist
Quote: Everybody hates a prodigy, detests an old head on young shoulders. Author: Desiderius Erasmus c.1466-1536, Dutch Humanist
Quote: Genius is entitled to respect only when it promotes the peace and improves the happiness of mankind. Author: Lord Essex
Quote: Genius without education is like silver in the mine. Author: Benjamin Franklin 1706-1790, American Scientist, Publisher, Diplomat
Quote: Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in the shade. Author: Benjamin Franklin 1706-1790, American Scientist, Publisher, Diplomat
Quote: I'm not a genius. I'm just a tremendous bundle of experience. Author: Buckminster Fuller American Engineer, Inventor, Designer, Architect ''Geodesic Dome''
Quote: 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. Author: Margaret Fuller 1810-1850, American Writer, Lecturer
Quote: 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. Author: Jose Ortega Y Gasset 1883-1955, Spanish Essayist, Philosopher
Quote: The first and last thing required of genius is, love of the truth. Author: Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe 1749-1832, German Poet, Dramatist, Novelist
Quote: The greatest genius will never be worth much if he pretends to draw exclusively from his own resources. Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1749-1832, German Poet, Dramatist, Novelist
Quote: 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. Author: Alexander Hamilton 1757-1804, American Statesman
Quote: 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. Author: B. R. Hayden 1913-1980, American Poet
Quote: The definition of genius is that it acts unconsciously; and those who have produced immortal works, have done so without knowing how or why. The greatest power operates unseen. Author: William Hazlitt 1778-1830, British Essayist
Quote: Talent is a faculty that is highly developed, but genius commands all the faculties. Author: Francis Herbert Hedge 1846-1924, British Philosopher
Quote: Great genius takes shape by contact with another great genius, but, less by assimilation than by fiction. Author: Heinrich Heine 1797-1856, German Poet, Journalist
Quote: Nature is the master of talents; genius is the master of nature. Author: Josiah Gilbert Holland 1819-1881, American Author
Quote: The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius. Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes 1809-1894, American Author, Wit, Poet
Quote: 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. Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes 1809-1894, American Author, Wit, Poet
Quote: Genius is the ability to act rightly without precedent -- the power to do the right thing the first time. Author: Elbert Hubbard 1859-1915, American Author, Publisher
Quote: Genius is a promontory jutting out into the infinite. Author: Victor Hugo 1802-1885, French Poet, Dramatist, Novelist
Quote: The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds. Author: David Hume 1711-1776, Scottish Philosopher, Historian
Quote: We are all geniuses up to the age of ten. Author: Aldous Huxley 1894-1963, British Author
Quote: 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. Author: Washington Irving 1783-1859, American Author
Quote: Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an inhabitual way. Author: William James 1842-1910, American Psychologist, Professor, Author
Quote: 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. Author: James Joyce 1882-1941, Irish Author
Quote: Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better. Author: Carl Jung 1875-1961, Swiss Psychiatrist
Quote: 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.'') Author: Paul Klee 1879-1940, Swiss Artist
Quote: 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. Author: Peter Kline American Peak Performance Expert
Quote: The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers. Author: Arthur Koestler 1905-1983, Hungarian Born British Writer
Quote: To see things in the seed is genius. Author: Lao-Tzu BC 600-?, Chinese Philosopher, Founder of Taoism, Author of the ''Tao Te Ching''
Quote: Genius always gives its best at first; prudence, at last. Author: Johann Kaspar Lavater 1741-1801, Swiss Theologian, Mystic
Quote: 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. Author: Johann Kaspar Lavater 1741-1801, Swiss Theologian, Mystic
Quote: The real people of genius were resolute workers not idle dreamers. Author: George Henry Lewes 1817-1878, British Writer
Quote: Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together. Author: Georg C. Lichtenberg 1742-1799, German Physicist, Satirist
Quote: 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. Author: Georg C. Lichtenberg 1742-1799, German Physicist, Satirist
Quote: Towering genius disdains a beaten path. Author: Abraham Lincoln 1809-1865, Sixteenth President of the USA
Quote: 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.'' Author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1819-1892, American Poet
Quote: It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us. Author: James Russell Lowell 1819-1891, American Poet, Critic, Editor
Quote: Every person of genius is considerably helped by being dead. Author: Robert S. Lund
Quote: Genius is eternal patience. Author: Michelangelo 1474-1564, Italian Renaissance Painter, Sculptor
Quote: There is no genius in life like the genius of energy and industry. Author: Don G. Mitchell
Quote: Genius without religion is only a lamp on the outer gate of a palace; it may serve to cast a gleam of light on those that are without, while the inhabitant sits in darkness. Author: Hannah More 1745-1833, British Writer, Reformer, Philanthropist
Quote: Genius is an African who dreams up snow. Author: Vladimir Nabokov 1899-1977, Russian-born American Novelist, Poet
Quote: Geniuses themselves don't talk about the gift of genius, they just talk about hard work and long hours. Author: J. C. (James Cash) Penney 1875-1971, American Retailer, Philanthropist, Founder JC Penny's
Quote: It is personality with a penny's worth of talent. Error which chances to rise above the commonplace. Author: Pablo Picasso 1881-1973, Spanish Artist
Quote: The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima. Author: Pablo Picasso 1881-1973, Spanish Artist
Quote: A man of genius has a right to any mode of expression. Author: Ezra Pound 1885-1972, American Poet, Critic
Quote: One of the satisfactions of a genius is his will-power and obstinacy. Author: Man Ray 1890-1976, American Photographer
Quote: The lamp of genius burns quicker than the lamp of life. Author: Johann Friedrich Von Schiller 1759-1805, German Dramatist, Poet, Historian
Quote: 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. Author: Friedrich Schlegel 1772-1829, German Philosopher, Critic, Writer
Quote: 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. Author: Arthur Schopenhauer 1788-1860, German Philosopher
Quote: Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it. Author: Germaine De Stael 1766-1817, French-Swiss Novelist
Quote: It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing. Author: Gertrude Stein 1874-1946, American Author
Quote: When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. Author: Jonathan Swift 1667-1745, Anglo-Irish Satirist
Quote: True genius sees with the eyes of a child and thinks with the brain of a genius. Author: Puzant Kevork Thomajan
Quote: Every man is a potential genius until he does something. Author: Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree 1853-1917, British actor-manager
Quote: The function of genius is not to give new answers, but to pose new questions which time and mediocrity can resolve. Author: H. R. Trevor-Roper
Quote: Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered -- either by themselves or by others. Author: Mark Twain 1835-1910, American Humorist, Writer
Quote: 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. Author: Source Unknown
Quote: Genius is nothing more than inflamed enthusiasm. Author: Source Unknown
Quote: So few people think. When we find one who really does, we call him a genius Author: Source Unknown
Quote: 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. Author: Source Unknown
Quote: The divine egoism hat is genius. Author: Mary Webb 1881-1927, British Novelist
Quote: Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought. Author: Simone Weil 1910-1943, French Philosopher, Mystic
Quote: Everybody denies I am a genius --but nobody ever called me one! Author: Orson Welles 1915-1985, American Film Maker
Quote: Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. Author: Oscar Wilde 1856-1900, British Author, Wit
Quote: I have nothing to declare except my genius. Author: Oscar Wilde 1856-1900, British Author, Wit
Quote: I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works. Author: Oscar Wilde 1856-1900, British Author, Wit
Quote: The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius. Author: Oscar Wilde 1856-1900, British Author, Wit
Quote: Talent is a flame. Genius is a fire. Author: Bern Williams
Quote: 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. Author: Virginia Woolf 1882-1941, British Novelist, Essayist
Quote: If a man was exactly as I am, of equal intelligence, and the only difference being his ability to put his thoughts into words, he would then seem to wear his genius on his sleeve and I would like a fool in comparison. Author: Tate T. Weber American by Birth, German by blood