Quotations on GENIUS(51)

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
--Aristotle

GENIUS
Some superior minds are unrecognized because there is no standard by which to weigh them.
Joseph Joubert

"The genius of any single man can no more equal learning, than a private purse hold way with the exchequer."
--Bacon, Francis; Advancement of Learning, 1605

INSPIRATION, OPPORTUNITY, GENIUS, IDEAS, CREATIVE,
Inspiration is the opportunity of genius.
--Honore De Balzac, La Cousine Bette

Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius.
--Josh Billings

ACTION
Action, so to speak, is the genius of nature.
--Blair

The ability of someone to choose and arrange the details of their creative field guided by a vision is a major hallmark of a genius.
--John Briggs

Genius has somewhat of the infantine; But of the childish not a
touch or taint.
--Robert Browning

ENTHUSIASM
Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm ;it is the real allegory of the tale of Orpheus; it moves stones; it charms brutes. Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.
--Bulwer Lytton

VICTORY, WINNING, GENIUS, ACHIEVEMENT
Only he who does great things with small means has successfully reached the goal.
--Karl Von Clausewitz 1780-1831

Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never.
--Samuel T. Coleridge

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men of talent. Genius will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan, 'press on' has solved, and always will solve, the problems of the human race.
--Calvin Coolidge

Oh! how near are genius and madness! Men imprison them and chain them, or raise statues to them.
--Denis Diderot

CREATIVITY
"Philosophy becomes poetry and science imagination, in the enthusiasm of genius."
--Disraeli

PATIENCE, TIMING, WAITING, GENIUS, SUCCESS
Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius.
Disraeli, Contarini Fleming

ORIGINAL, BETTER, DIFFERENCE< DIVERSITY, UNIQUE, ROUTINE< COMMON< POPULAR, GROUP
Improvement makes straight roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius.
William Blake

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

ART
Art is a jealous mistress, and, if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture, or philosophy, he makes a bad husband, and an ill provider, and should be wise in season, and not fetter himself with duties which will imbitter his days and spoil him for his proper work.
Emerson

INTELLECTUALISM, LEFT BRAIN, NARROW FOCUS
"The movements of exaltation which belong to genius are egotistic by their very nature. A calm, clear mind, not subject to the spasms and crises which are so often met with in creative or intensely perceptive natures, is the best basis for love or friendship. --Observe, I am talking about minds. I won't say, the more intellect, the less capacity for loving; for that would do wrong to the understanding and reason;-- but on the other hand, that the brain runs away with the heart's best blood, which gives the world a few pages of wisdom or sentiment or poetry, instead of making one other heart happy, I have no question."
Holmes, O.W.THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius.
Arthur Conan Doyle

Genius will live and thrive without training, but it does not the less reward the watering pot and the pruning knife.
Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) U.S. critic, social reformer, writer

The especial genius of women I believe to be electrical in movement, intuitive in function, spiritual in tendency.
Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) U.S. critic, social reformer, writer

TESTING
Geniuses used to be rare. Today, thanks to popular interpretation of test scores, every elementary or secondary school has its quota.
--John W. Gardner, EXCELLENCE;Can we be equal and excellent too? 1961

DREAM, BOLDNESS, BEGIN, START, GENIUS< POWER, MAGIC
STARTING,
The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decisions, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.
Goethe

Both wit and understanding are trifles without integrity. The ignorant peasant without fault is greater than the philosopher with many. What is genius or courage without a heart?
--Oliver Goldsmith

If we wish to know the force of human genius we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning we may study his commentators.
William Hazlitt

Genius is nothing but continued attention.
Claude Adrien Helvetius

Constant effort and frequent mistakes are the stepping-stones of genius.
--Elbert Hubbard

GENIUS
Some superior minds are unrecognized because there is no standard by which to weigh them.
--Joseph Joubert

"Genius always gives its best at first, prudence at last."
--Lavater, J.C.

GENIUS
"Everyone, if he would look into himself, would find some defect of his particular genius."
--LOCKE, JOHN

LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH, 1807-1882
GENIUS
"Men of genius are often dull and inert in society; as the blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone."
--Longfellow

ACTION
Activity is God's medicine; the highest genius is willingness and ability to do hard work. Any other conception of genius makes it a doubtful, if not a dangerous possession.
--Robert Stuart MacArthur

ART
"Genius is eternal patience."
--Michelangelo

GENIUS, IMPERFECTION, ECCENTRICITY, GREATNESS,
It is strange that all great men should have some oddness, some little grain of folly mingled with whatever genius they possess.
--Moliere,

No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as a dog does.
Christopher Morley

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 A. Mozart

Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
--Vladimir Nabokov

A man of genius is unbearable, unless he possesses at least two things besides: gratitude and purity.
--Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil

...we are even strangers to our own genius.
--Penn, William, Some Fruits of Solitude

ART
To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart.
--Pope, Prologue to Cato

Persons of genius, and those who are most capable of art, are always most fond of nature: as such are chiefly sensible, that all art consists in the imitation and study of nature.
--Pope

Consult the genius of the place in all.
--Pope, Epistle to Lord Burlington

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

There is no genius without a mixture of madness.
--Seneca, De Tranquillitate, Animi

It takes a lot of time being a genius -- you have to sit around so much doing nothing.
Gertrude Stein

I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the varieties of rhythm offer me the opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust.
--Igor Stravinsky

When a true genius appears in this world you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
--Swift

only three times in my life have I met a genius and each time a bell within me rang and I was not mistaken.
Alice B Toklas, Autobiography, by Gertrude Stein

Genius does not herd with genius.
OW Holmes