Quotes about genius

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

Adams, Joey Lauren on genius
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"Genius is sorrow's child."

Adams, John on genius
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"It takes people a long time to learn the difference between talent and genius, especially ambitious young men and women."

Alcott, Louisa May on genius   

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic on genius
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"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 on genius
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"We know that the nature of genius is to provide idiots with ideas twenty years later."

Aragon, Louis on genius
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"There is no great genius without a mixture of madness."

Aristotle on genius
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"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."

Asquith, Margot on genius   

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

Auden, W. H. on genius
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"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."

Baudelaire, Charles on genius
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"Genius is childhood recaptured."

Baudrillard, Jean on genius   

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

Beauvoir, Simone De on genius
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"Genius unexerted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks."

Beecher, Henry Ward on genius
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"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."

Beerbohm, Sir Max on genius
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"Genius is the gold in the mine; talent is the miner who works and brings it out."

Blessington, Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of on genius   

"Genius makes its observations in short-hand; talent writes them out at length."

Bovee, Christian Nevell on genius
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"What is genius but the power of expressing a new individuality?"

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett on genius
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"Since when was genius found respectable?"

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett on genius
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"Genius is nothing but a great capacity for patience."

Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc on genius
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"Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius."

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G. on genius
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"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."

Butler, Samuel on genius   

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"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 on genius
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"What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the right road empirically, following one's nose, taking shortcuts."

Calvino, Italo on genius   

"Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains."

Carlyle, Thomas on genius
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"Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple."

Ceran, C. W. on genius
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"Passion holds up the bottom of the universe and genius paints up its roof."

Chao Chang on genius   

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

Child, Lydia M. on genius   

"Genius is independent of situation."

Churchill, Charles on genius   

"True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information."

Churchill, Winston on genius
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"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 on genius   

"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 on genius   

"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 on genius   

"Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active."

Da Vinci, Leonardo on genius
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"Genius, like truth, has a shabby and neglected mien."

Dahlberg, Edward on genius   

"Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them."

Davies, Robertson on genius   

"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 on genius   

"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."

Diderot, Denis on genius
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"Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius."

Disraeli, Benjamin on genius
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"Genius, when young, is divine."

Disraeli, Benjamin on genius   

"Fortune has rarely condescended to be the companion of genius."

Disraeli, Isaac on genius