Quotes about genius

"Genius must be born, and never can be taught."

Dryden, John on genius
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"Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide."

Dryden, John on genius
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"Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, but genius must be born; and never can be taught."

Dryden, John on genius   

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

Edison, Thomas A. on genius   

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

Edison, Thomas A. on genius
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"Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline."

Eliot, George on genius   

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on genius   

"The greatest genius is the most indebted person."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on genius
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"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 on genius   

"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."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on genius
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"When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on genius
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"In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on genius
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"Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on genius
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"Accept your genius and say what you think."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on genius
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"A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on genius   

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

Erasmus, Desiderius on genius   

"Genius is entitled to respect only when it promotes the peace and improves the happiness of mankind."

Essex, Lord on genius   

"Genius without education is like silver in the mine."

Franklin, Benjamin on genius
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"Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in the shade."

Franklin, Benjamin on genius
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"I'm not a genius. I'm just a tremendous bundle of experience."

Fuller, Buckminster on genius   

"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 on genius   

"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   

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on genius
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"The greatest genius will never be worth much if he pretends to draw exclusively from his own resources."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on genius
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"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 on genius
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"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."

Hayden, B. R. on genius   

"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."

Hazlitt, William on genius   

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

Hedge, Francis Herbert on genius   

"Great genius takes shape by contact with another great genius, but, less by assimilation than by fiction."

Heine, Heinrich on genius   

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

Holland, Josiah Gilbert on genius   

"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 on genius
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"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 on genius   

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

Hubbard, Elbert on genius
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"Genius is a promontory jutting out into the infinite."

Hugo, Victor on genius   

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

Hume, David on genius   

"We are all geniuses up to the age of ten."

Huxley, Aldous on genius   

"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 on genius   

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

James, William on genius   

"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."

Joyce, James on genius   

"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."

Jung, Carl on genius