"It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing."

Stein, Gertrude on genius   

"Pain nourishes courage. You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you."

Moore, Mary Tyler on pain
14 fans of this quote   

"If people only knew how hard I work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all."

Michelangelo on master
6 fans of this quote   

"It is well with me only when I have a chisel in my hand."

Michelangelo on work   

"Be true to your own act and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant to break the monotony of a decorous age."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on honesty
8 fans of this quote   

"In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."

Hoffer, Eric on learning
5 fans of this quote   

"The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it."

Drew, Elizabeth on literature
4 fans of this quote   

"All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on trust
10 fans of this quote   

"Gaiety --a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine."

Diderot, Denis on happiness   

"Exhilaration is that feeling you get just after a great idea hits you, and just before you realize what's wrong with it."

Harrison, Rex on exhilaration
4 fans of this quote   

"Even though you know a thousand things, ask the man who knows one."

Proverb, Turkish on wisdom
9 fans of this quote   

"One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art."

Wilde, Oscar on dress
24 fans of this quote   

"In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs."

Weil, Simone on churches   

"The imagination is never governed, it is always the ruling and divine power."

Ruskin, John on imagination
4 fans of this quote   

"Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader."

Joubert, Joseph on writers and writing   

"Failure is not our only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others."

Renard, Jules on laziness
5 fans of this quote   

"The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on purpose
3 fans of this quote   

"Good humor isn't a trait of character, it is an art which requires practice."

Seabury, David on humor
4 fans of this quote   

"Education is the art of making man ethical."

Hegel, Georg on education
5 fans of this quote   

"The best training any parent can give a child is to train the child to train himself."

Gouthey, A. P. on training   

"The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them."

Butler, Samuel on books - reading
3 fans of this quote   

"I try to leave out the parts that people skip."

Leonard, Elmore on strategies   

"To be thoroughly conversant with a man's heart, is to take our final lesson in the iron-clasped volume of despair."

Poe, Edgar Allan on despair   

"The essential part of creativity is not being afraid to fail."

Land, Edwin H. on creativity
11 fans of this quote   

"When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare."

Thurber, James on writers and writing   

"It is vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it."

Bronte, Charlotte on action
3 fans of this quote   

"And when a woman's will is as strong as the man's who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment."

Eliot, George on women
4 fans of this quote   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"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 on genius   

"To live is like to love-all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it."

Butler, Samuel on life   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on society
4 fans of this quote   

"The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for."

Dostoevsky, Fyodor on purpose
8 fans of this quote   

"Art distills sensations and embodies it with enhanced meaning."

Barzun, Jacques on art   

"The narrative impulse is always with us; we couldn't imagine ourselves through a day without it."

Coover, Robert on fiction   

"As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death."

Shaw, George Bernard on action
9 fans of this quote   

"Stupidity, outrage, vanity, cruelty, iniquity, bad faith, falsehood -- we fail to see the whole array when it is facing in the same direction as we."

Rostand, Jean on prejudice
4 fans of this quote   

"I think somehow we learn who we really are and then we live with that decision."

Roosevelt, Eleanor on self discovery
6 fans of this quote   

"We have art in order not to die of the truth."

Nietzsche, Friedrich on art
8 fans of this quote   

"Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit."

Hill, Napoleon on adversity
31 fans of this quote   

"To teach successfully we must tell all we know, but only what is adaptable to the student."

La Harpe, Frederic-Cesar on teacher
5 fans of this quote   

"For the friendship of two, the patience of one is required."

Proverb, Indian on friends and friendship
14 fans of this quote