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Genius |
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| "Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must
do is the same as what they most want to do." |
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-- Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-73),
British-born American writer, critic
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| "Genius is 1% inspiration and
99% perspiration." |
| -- Thomas Alva Edison
(1847-1931), American inventor |
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| "Genius - To know without having learned;
to draw just conclusions from unknown premises; to discern the soul
of things." |
| -- Ambrose Gwinett Bierce (1842-1914), American
writer |
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| "Neither a lofty degree of intelligence
nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love,
love, love, that is the soul of genius." |
| -- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart |
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| "Intellectuals solve problems;
geniuses prevent them." |
| -- Albert Einstein (1875-1955),
German-born American theoretical physicist |
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| "Talent, lying in the
understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason or
imagination, rarely or never." |
| -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(1772-1834), English poet, critic |
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| "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." |
| -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803-82), American writer, philosopher, poet, essayist |
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| "Whatever you do, or dream you
can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it." |
| -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(1749-1832), German writer, scientist |
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| "Neither
a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the
making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius." |
|
--
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart |
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| "The principal mark of a genius is not
perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers." |
| -- Arthur Koestler |
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| "Every man who observes vigilantly and
resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius." |
| -- Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton
(1803-73), British writer |
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| "Men of genius are often
dull and inert in society, as a blazing meteor when it descends to earth,
is only a stone." |
| -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(1807-82), American writer |
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| "Genius may have its
limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped." |
| -- Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915),
American author |
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| "Nobody in football should be
called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein." |
| -- Joe Theisman, [Broadway] NFL
football quarterback and sports analyst |
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| "The secret of genius is to
carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your
enthusiasm." |
| -- Aldous Leonard Huxley
(1894-1963), British writer, "Brave New World" |
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| "A man of genius has been
seldom ruined but by himself." |
| -- Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-84),
British writer, lexicographer |
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| "The essence of genius is to
know what to overlook." |
| -- William James (1842-1910),
American psychologist, philosopher |
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| "When a true genius appears in
this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in
confederacy against him." |
| -- Jonathan Swift (1667-1745),
Irish-born English writer |
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| "Talent is what you possess; genius is what
possesses you."
|
| -- Malcolm Cowley |
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| "A society grows great when old men plant trees
whose shade they know they shall never sit in." |
| -- Greek Proverb |
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"Genius
is nothing but a great aptitude for patience." |
|
--
George-Louis De Buffon |
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| "Genius without education is like silver
in the mine." |
| -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-90), American
statesman, writer, scientist |
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| "First and last, what is demanded of
genius is love of truth." |
| -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832),
German writer, scientist |
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| "Genius does what it must, and talent does
what it can." |
| -- Owen Meredith
Earl of Lytton |
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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." |
| -- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
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| "Genius is the ability to put into effect
what is on your mind." |
| -- F(rancis) Scott (Key) Fitzgerald
(1896-1940), American writer |
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| "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." |
| -- Denis Diderot (1713-84),
French philosopher, writer |
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| "Genius begins great work, labor alone
finishes it." |
| -- Joseph Joubert |
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| "The first and last thing required of genius is the
love of truth." |
| -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(1749-1832), German writer, scientist |
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| "It is in the gift for employing all the
vicissitudes of life to one's own advantage and to that of one's
craft that a large part of genius consists." |
| -- Georg Christopher Lichtenberg (1742-99),
German physicist, philosopher |
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| "Universality is the distinguishing mark
of genius. There is no such thing as a special genius, a genius for
mathematics, or for music, or even for chess, but only a universal
genius. The genius is a man who knows everything without having
learned it." |
| -- Otto Weininger |
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| "Our observation of nature
must be diligent, our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. We
rarely see these three means combined; and for this reason, creative
geniuses are not common." |
| -- Denis Diderot (1713-84),
French philosopher, writer |
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| "Books are the legacies that a great
genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation
to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet
unborn." |
| -- Joseph Addison (1672-1719), English essayist |
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| "Men give me credit for some
genius. All the genius I have lies in this; when I have a subject in hand,
I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. My mind becomes
pervaded with it. Then the effort that I have made is what people are
pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and
thought." |
| -- Alexander Hamilton
(1755?-1804), US Secretary of the Treasury |
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| "A man should learn to detect
and watch that gleam that flashes across his mind from within, more than
the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without
notice his own thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we
recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a sort of
alienated majesty." |
| -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803-82), American writer, philosopher, poet, essayist |
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| "When you close your doors, and make
darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you
are not alone; nay, God is within, and your genius is within." |
| -- Epictetus (50 AD - 138 AD) |
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| "Doing easily what others find difficult
is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius." |
| -- Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821-81), Swiss
philosopher, poet |
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| "Genius is brilliant original creation
within defined boundaries. Intelligent, gifted people mimic
patterns brilliantly. Geniuses may mimic also, but what defines them
uniquely is their ability to move beyond mimicry to the very sources
of creation, and, as a result, to introduce altogether new patterns
into the defined boundaries of their focus." |
| -- Albert Emerson Unaterra (1952-2002),
American writer |
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| “Beauty
is a form of genius--is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no
explanation. It is of the great facts in the world like sunlight, or
springtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we
call the moon.” |
| -- Oscar Wilde (1856-1900) |
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| "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." |
| -- William Hazlitt (1778-1830) |
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| "Beware of dissipating your powers; strive
constantly to concentrate them. Genius thinks it can do whatever it
sees others doing, but is sure to repent of every ill-judged
outlay." |
| -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832) |
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| "Genius is a promontory jutting out of the
infinite." |
| -- Victor Hugo |
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| "Thus, the creative genius may be at once
naive and knowledgeable; being at home equally to primitive
symbolism and to rigorous logic. He is both more primitive and more
cultured, more destructive and more constructive, occasionally
crazier and yet adamantly saner than the average person." |
| -- Frank X. Barron (Creative &
Personal Freedom)
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| "The world is always ready to receive
talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with
genius." |
| --
Oliver Wendell Holmes |
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| "Never think that God's delays are God's
denials. Hold on; hold fast; hold out. Patience is genius." |
| -- George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon (1707-88),
[Comte] French naturalist |
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| "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, American astronomer |
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| “A
genius is the man in whom you are least likely to find the power of
attending to anything insipid or distasteful in itself. He breaks
his engagements, leaves his letters unanswered, neglects his family
duties incorrigibly, because he is powerless to turn his attention
down and back from those more interesting trains of imagery with
which his genius constantly occupies his mind.” |
| -- William James (1842-1910) |
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| "The genius differs from us men in being
able to endure isolation, his rank as a genius is proportionate to
his strength for enduring isolation, whereas we men are constantly
in need of "the others," the herd; we die, or despair, if
we are not reassured by being in the herd, of the same opinion as
the herd." |
| --
Soren Kierkegaard (1813 - 1855), Danish philosopher |
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