Motivational Quotes

Genius

The greatest genius is the most indebted person.

- Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Best Quotes about Genius

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

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

William Hazlitt

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

Beauvoir, Simone De

Genius is sorrow's child.

Adams, John

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

Lowell, James Russell

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

Seneca

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

Auden, W. H.

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

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.

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

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

11.

Everybody denies I am a genius --but nobody ever called me one!

Welles, Orson

12.

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.

Irving, Washington

13.

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

14.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

15.

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

16.

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

Pound, Ezra

17.

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.

18.

Genius is nothing more than inflamed enthusiasm.

19.

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

20.

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.

21.

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

22.

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

23.

Talent is a flame. Genius is a fire.

Williams, Bern

24.

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

Wilde, Oscar

25.

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

Holland, Josiah Gilbert

26.

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

James, William

27.

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

28.

Every man is a potential genius until he does something.

Tree, Sir Herbert Beerbohm

29.

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

Lewes, George Henry

30.

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

Penney, J. C. (James Cash)

31.

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.

Schlegel, Friedrich

32.

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.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

33.

Accept your genius and say what you think.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

34.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

35.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

36.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

37.

Genius is nothing but a great capacity for patience.

Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc

38.

There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.

Aristotle

39.

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

Ray, Man

40.

We are all geniuses up to the age of ten.

Huxley, Aldous

41.

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

Ceran, C. W.

42.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

43.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

44.

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

45.

Genius, like truth, has a shabby and neglected mien.

Dahlberg, Edward

46.

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

Oscar Levant

47.

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.

48.

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

49.

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

Oscar Wilde

50.

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