These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or in the repose of a pacific station, that great challenges are formed. . . . Great necessities call out great virtues.
A genius is one who can do anything except make a living.
Books are the legacies of 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.
Conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long; even if it is, the consciousness of possessing and using it well should satisfy one, and the great charm of all power is modesty.
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.
Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
Since when was genius found respectable?
Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them.
Genius always finds itself a century too early.
In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.
The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.
No amount of genius can overcome a preoccupation with detail.
Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.
Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
A genius is one who shoots at something no one else can see, and hits it.
Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can.
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.
Many a genius is never honored until the future proves his inspiration. Old Proverbs, Wise Sayings; Collected & published by the Quotationary compiler for 6th grade class project, age 12 every positive value has its price in negative terms...The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.
One science only will one genius fit: so vast is art, so narrow human wit.
We should like to have some towering geniuses, to reveal us to ourselves in colour and fire, but of course they would have to fit into the pattern of our society and be able to take orders from sound administrative types.
When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.
Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.
