Motivational Quotes

Genius

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

Best Quotes about Genius

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.

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

Samuel Butler

Schlegel, Friedrich

The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.

Picasso, Pablo

Genius is nothing more than inflamed enthusiasm.

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

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

Dahlberg, Edward

The first and last thing required of genius is, love of the truth.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

10.

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

11.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

12.

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

13.

Accept your genius and say what you think.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Child, Lydia M.

17.

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

18.

It is personality with a penny's worth of talent. Error which chances to rise above the commonplace.

Picasso, Pablo

19.

The greatest genius is the most indebted person.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

20.

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

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.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

Seneca

23.

Genius is nothing but a great capacity for patience.

Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc

24.

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

Auden, W. H.

25.

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

Hedge, Francis Herbert

26.

A genius is one who can do anything except make a living.

Adams, Joey Lauren

27.

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

28.

To see things in the seed is genius.

Lao-Tzu

29.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

30.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

31.

True genius sees with the eyes of a child and thinks with the brain of a genius.

Thomajan, Puzant Kevork

32.

Genius is independent of situation.

Churchill, Charles

33.

Talent is a flame. Genius is a fire.

Williams, Bern

34.

Every person of genius is considerably helped by being dead.

Lund, Robert S.

35.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

36.

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

37.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

38.

Genius hath electric power which earth can never tame.

Lydia M. Child

39.

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

William Hazlitt

40.

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

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

41.

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

Wilde, Oscar

42.

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

Weil, Simone

43.

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

Hume, David

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.

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

46.

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

Koestler, Arthur

47.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

48.

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

Oscar Wilde

49.

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