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- b.1744 d.1818...
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 characters are formed... Great necessities call out great virtues. (Abigail Adams)
Genius is sorrow's child. (John Adams)
Talent isn't genius, and no amount of energy can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing. I won't be a commonplace dauber, so I don't intend to try any more. (Louisa May Alcott)
Is purpose only found in the lives of genius? (Robert G. Allen)
Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius. (Henri-Frederic Amiel)
The function of genius is to furnish cretins with ideas twenty years later. (Louis Aragon)
Geniuses are like ocean liners: they should never meet. (Louis Aragon)
There was never a genius without a tincture of insanity. (Aristotle)
The greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances. (Aristotle)
There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him. (Antonin Artaud)
Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do. (W. H. Auden)
Genius, that power which dazzles mortal eyes, is oft but perseverance in disguise. (Henry Willard Austin)
There have been only two authentic geniuses in the world, Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare. (Tallulah Bankhead)
The creative genius may be at once naive and knowledgeable, being at home equally with primitive symbolism and rigorous logic. (Frank X Barron)
Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs. (Max Beerbohm)
- Herzog, 1964...
We mustn't forget how quickly the visions of genius become the canned goods of intellectuals. (Saul Bellow)
We define genius as the capacity for productive reaction against one's training. (Bernard Berenson)
Genius is that which forces the inertia of humanity to learn. (Henri Bergson)
Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius. (Josh Billings)
Ages are All Equal. / But Genius is Always Above The Age. (William Blake)
Improvement makes straight roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius. (William Blake)
The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success. (James Bond)
Genius makes its observations in short-hand; talent writes them out at length. (Christian Nestell Bovee)
Life is not about discovering our talents; it is about pushing our talents to the limit and discovering our genius. (Robert Brault)
Genius is a plodding intellect, incapable of dreaming up the obstacles that stop the rest of us. (Robert Brault)
And he was a genius, in the sense that a genius is a man who has two great ideas. (Jacob Bronowski)
Oh, I'm not a true genius. I'm a near genius. I would say I'm a short genius. I'd rather be tall and normal than a short genius. (Mel Brooks)
Genius, by its very intensity, decrees a special path of fire for its vivid power. (Phillips Brooks)
Genius and virtue are to be more often found clothed in gray than in peacock bright. (Van Wyck Brooks)
Since when was genius found respectable? (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)
Genius is only a greater aptitude for patience. (George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon)
Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way. (Charles Bukowski)
Genius does what it must, and talent does what it can. (Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton)
Genius has no brother. (Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton)
Being a genius is hard work. (Tony Calderone)
I don't want to be a genius – I have enough problems just trying to be a man. (Albert Camus)
-response to Robert Genn's letter...
Let's say Edison was right. Further, let's say that Henri was right too. So, if there is 1% genius in everyone, you are a genius, just like the rest of us. It is, then, only the 99% perspiration that counts. (Bill Cannon)
A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus. (Thomas Carlyle)
Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains. (Thomas Carlyle)
The Church: A Comedy in Five Acts...
The beginning of genius is being scared shitless. (Louis-Ferdinand Celine)
Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple. (C. W. Ceram)
Genius is the ability to renew one's emotions in daily experience. (Paul Cezanne)
Genius hath electric power which earth can never tame. (Lydia M. Child)
This is the nature of genius, to be able to grasp the knowable even when no one else recognizes that it is present. (Deepak Chopra)
Genius is of no country. (Charles Churchill)
I believe in the God-given genius of certain individuals, and I value a society that makes their existence possible. (Sir Kenneth Clark)
Any complex activity, if it is to be carried on with any degree of virtuosity, calls for appropriate gifts of intellect and temperament. If they are outstanding and reveal themselves in exceptional achievements, their possessor is called a 'genius.' (Carl von Clausewitz)
The art of genius is knowing how far out is too far. (Jean Cocteau)
People of humor are always in some degree people of genius. (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
With the offspring of genius, the law of parturition is reversed: the throes are in the conception, the pleasure is the birth. (Charles Caleb Colton)
Talent is what you possess; genius is what possesses you. (Malcolm Cowley)
Oh, Salvador, Now you know the truth; if you act the genius you will be one. (Salvador Dali)
The source of genius is imagination alone, the refinement of the senses that sees what others do not see, or sees them differently. (Eugene Delacroix)
The concealment of art by the actor is as great a mark of genius as it is in the painter. (Francois Delsarte)
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)
Genius, when young, is divine. (Benjamin Disraeli)
It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people, without possessing genius, have a remarkable power of stimulating it. (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, / Genius must be born, and never can be taught. (John Dryden)
Like all young men I set out to be a genius, but mercifully laughter intervened. (Lawrence Durrell)
The continuous capacity of genius to surpass understanding remains a human constant. (Denis Dutton)
Genius is talent set on fire by courage. (Henry van Dyke)
Genius points the way; talent pursues it. (Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach)
Genius is one percent inspiration, and ninety-nine percent perspiration. (Thomas Edison)
It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer. (Albert Einstein)
- Picasso at the Lapin Agile 1993...
Genius is when an idea and the execution of that idea are simultaneous. (Albert Einstein)
Subconsciously the genius is feared as an image breaker; frequently he does not accept the opinions of the mass, or man's opinion of himself. (Loren Eiseley)
With the stones we cast at them, geniuses build new roads for us. (Paul Eldridge)
Every man of genius sees the world at a different angle from his fellows, and there is his tragedy. (George Eliot)
Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline. (George Eliot)
We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
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)
Once you had to be a genius to make works of art. Now you have to be a genius to understand them. (Roy Emmins)
Nietzsche claimed that his genius was in his nostrils and I think that is a very excellent place for it to be. (Federico Fellini)
Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind. (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
I believe the greatest characteristic of genius, is, above all, force. (Gustave Flaubert)
Genius is another word for magic, and the whole point of magic is that it is inexplicable. (Margot Fonteyn)
Genius is the power of lighting one's own fire. (John Foster)
Genius without education is like silver in the mine. (Benjamin Franklin)
Art is the supreme communicator of diverse cultures and ideas in a common frame of understanding, a virtual bridge across time. It is also the universal link into genius. (Edward J. Fraughton)
...the highest, the only reality, is ever at hand, but for the most part invisible. Genius makes it visible... (Egon Friedell)
I am convinced all of humanity is born with
more gifts than we know. Most are born
geniuses and just get de-geniused rapidly. (Buckminster Fuller)
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. (Margaret Fuller)
We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own or to other people's models, learn to be ourselves, and allow our natural channel to open. (Shakti Gawain)
Crazy people who are productive are geniuses. Crazy people who are rich are eccentric. Crazy people who are neither productive nor rich are just plain crazy. (Michael J. Gelb)
The most gifted natures are perhaps also the most trembling. (Andre Gide)
First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
True genius walks along a line, and, perhaps, our greatest pleasure is in seeing it so often near falling, without being ever actually down. (Oliver Goldsmith)
Give me a smart idiot over a stupid genius any day. (Samuel Goldwyn)
One cannot explain the existence of genius. It is better to enjoy it. (Ernst Gombrich)
Genius unrefined resembles a flash of lightning, but wisdom is like the sun. (Franz Grillparzer)
For every person with a spark of genius, there are a hundred with ignition trouble. (Kurt Hanks)
Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labor in it, but they labor in it because they excel. (William Hazlitt)
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)
Great genius takes shape by contact with another great genius, but, less by assimilation than by fiction. (Heinrich Heine)
Genius is nothing but continued attention. (Claude Adrien Helvetius)
Genius is not a possession of the limited few, but exists in some degree in everyone. Where there is natural growth, a full and free play of faculties, genius will manifest itself. (Robert Henri)
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius. (Sherlock Holmes)
Gift, like genius, I often think, only means an infinite capacity for taking pains. (Jane Hopkins)
Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it. (Horace)
There have been countless changes in the long history of art. The most significant have been brought about by the genius of a single artist. (Thomas Hoving)
Genius is a promontory jutting out into the future. (Victor Hugo)
The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm. (Aldous Huxley)
In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous. (Robert G. Ingersoll)
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. (Washington Irving)
Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way. (William James)
The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction. (Samuel Johnson)
A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery. (James Joyce)
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. (Carl Gustav Jung)
You're a genius all the time. (Jack Kerouac)
Genius is the error in the system. (Paul Klee)
The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers. (Arthur Koestler)
Genius can probably run on ahead and seek out new ways. But the good artists who follow after genius – and I count myself among these – have to restore the lost connection once more. (Kathe Kollwitz)
Genius is seeing what everyone else is seeing and thinking what no one else has thought. (George Lengvari)
Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together. (Georg Christoph Lichtenberg)
I think you're all mad. But that's part and parcel of being an artistic genius, isn't it? (Charles de Lint)
Genius is one of the many forms of insanity. (Cesare Lombroso)
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)
The mark of genius is consistency. Do we hear of naive genius piano players? If anyone knows of one, try listening to it for an hour. (David Louis)
It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us. (James Russell Lowell)
Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is. (Robert Lowell)
Every man of genius is considerably helped by being dead. (Robert S. Lynd)
Genius is rare because the means of becoming one have not been available. (Luis Alberto Machado)
My geni, the genius inside, needs to be massaged to come out. I am the masseuse. (Mary Jean Mailloux)
An artist discovers his genius the day he dares not to please. (Andre Malraux)
In art, the genius creator is not just a gifted being, but a person who has succeeded in arranging for their appointed end, a complex of activities, of which the work is the outcome. (Henri Matisse)
Genius is talent provided with ideals. (W. Somerset Maugham)
There's no such thing as an undiscovered genius. (Strother McMinn)
The genius of a composer is found in the notes of his music; but analyzing the notes will not reveal his genius. The poet's greatness is contained in his words; yet the study of his words will not disclose his inspiration. God reveals himself in creation; but scrutinize creation as minutely as you wish, you will not find God, any more than you will find the soul through careful examination of your body. (Anthony de Mello)
- Cracking Creativity...
Creative geniuses tend to return to the conceptual world of childhood and are able to wed the most advanced understandings of a field with the sensibilities of a wonder-filled child. (Michael Michalko)
If genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains, what distinguishes it from masochism? (Bruce M. Miller)
Whatever you think can't be done, somebody will come along and do it. A genius is the one most like himself. (Thelonius Monk)
The world wants geniuses, but it wants them to behave just like other people. (George Moore)
Genius is an African that dreams of snow. (Vladimir Nabokov)
- Memento mori...
For a few minutes of every day, every man becomes a genius. This is the tragedy of life. (Jonathan Nolan)
Before I was a genius I was a drudge. (Ignace Paderewski)
The deserving are not always blest. That peculiar attribute known as personality is as potent a factor as genius. (Walter J. Phillips)
Giftedness is not a matter of degree but of a different quality of experiencing: vivid, absorbing, penetrating, encompassing, complex, commanding – a way of being quiveringly alive. (Michael Piechowski)
True genius does not understand the word fear – instead, the sails are set by hope of unseen shores. (Todd Plough)
One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit. (Alexander Pope)
A man of genius has a right to any mode of expression. (Ezra Pound)
Genius... is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one. (Ezra Pound)
- The War of Art...
Every sun casts a shadow, and genius's shadow is Resistance. (Steven Pressfield)
We should like to have some towering geniuses, to reveal us to ourselves in color and fire... (Joseph Priestley)
A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race - and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin. (Ayn Rand)
Be a good craftsman; it won't stop you being a genius. (Pierre-Auguste Renoir)
The painter of genius will not waste a moment upon those smaller objects which only serve to catch the sense, to divide the attention, and to counteract his great design of speaking to the heart. (Sir Joshua Reynolds)
True genius in art reveals something of self. (CJ Rider)
Those same forces that drive a genius to create the things or ideas that entertain or enlighten us often gobble so much of his personality that he has none left for the social graces. (Tom Robbins)
Passion is the genesis of genius. (Tony Robbins)
I've never seen giftedness expire. I've seen it get worse – that the sensitivity deepens, the perfectionism gets more intense, the excitability factor – all this energy will erupt, just makes more of itself. (Mary Rocamora)
Genius only comes to those who know how to use their eyes and their intelligence. (Auguste Rodin)
The modes of expression of men of genius differ as much as their souls, and it is impossible to say that in some among them, drawing and colour are better or worse than in others. (Auguste Rodin)
Obsessive devotion to creating can spark that which is called 'genius.' Smarter or more gifted? The 'madness' is the insatiable drive to discover, achieve and create. Monomania can develop into 'genius,' as the individual delves deeper into the process leaving normal parameters behind. (Paul Russo)
If you study a great work of art, you'll probably find the artist was a kind of genius. And geniuses are different to you and me. (Charles Saatchi)
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)
A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one. Genius is the talent of a dead man. (Carl Sandburg)
A genius! For thirty-seven years I've practiced fourteen hours a day, and now they call me a genius! (Pablo Sarasate)
Every true genius is bound to be naive. (Johann Friedrich von Schiller)
Genius is, to be sure, not a matter of arbitrariness, but rather of freedom, just as wit, love, and faith, which once shall become arts and disciplines. We should demand genius from everybody, without, however, expecting it. (Friedrich Von Schlegel)
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see. (Arthur Schopenhauer)
There is no great genius without some tincture of madness. (Seneca)
A painter, if he has any genius, understands the truth and unity of design; and he knows he is even then unnatural when he follows Nature too close... For his art allows him not to bring all nature into his piece, but a part only. (Shaftesbury)
Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius. (George Bernard Shaw)
It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius should be privileged to utter sedition, to blaspheme, to outrage good taste, to corrupt the youthful mind, and generally to scandalize one's uncles. (George Bernard Shaw)
The real geniuses know where their writing has to be good and where they can get away with some mediocrity. (Dmitri Shostakovich)
The dread of censure is the death of genius. (William Gilmore Simms)
Geniuses are those who have the intelligence, enthusiasm, and endurance to acquire the needed expertise in a broadly valued domain of achievement and who then make contributions to that field that are considered by peers to be both original and highly exemplary. (Dean Keith Simonton)
The reluctance to put away childish things may be a requirement of genius. (Rebecca Pepper Sinkler)
Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it. (Madame de Stael)
Genius does not need a special language; it uses newly whatever tongue it finds. (Edmund C. Stedman)
To complicate things in new ways, that is really very easy; but to see things in new ways, that is difficult and that is why genius is so rare. (Gertrude Stein)
It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing. (Gertrude Stein)
The man of genius is he and he alone who finds such joy in his art that he will work at it come hell or high water. (Stendhal)
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)
No man ever followed his genius 'til it mislead him. (Henry David Thoreau)
What is called genius is the abundance of life and health. (Henry David Thoreau)
The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express. (Alexis de Tocqueville)
Genius, unlike virtuosity, is judged by the greatness of results, not by the brilliance of performance. (Vincent Tomas)
Genius is the true mystery, and at its edge - the abyss. (Guillermo del Toro)
Genius is there in all of us, just waiting for us to tap into it. (Robert R. Toth)
The function of genius is not to give new answers, but to pose new questions - which time and mediocrity can solve. (Hugh Trevor-Roper)
I'm no genius. I'm not at all; I just happen to look five or 10 years ahead and think things through... (Ted Turner)
Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by themselves or by others. (Mark Twain)
Hunger is the handmaid of genius. (Mark Twain)
To see things in the seed, that is genius. (Lao Tzu)
Everyone is born with genius, but most people only keep it a few minutes. (Edgard Varese)
-to Leonardo da Vinci...
Men of genius sometimes accomplish most when they work the least, for they are thinking out inventions and forming in their minds the perfect idea that they subsequently express with their hands. (Giorgio Vasari)
Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an I.Q. of 60. (Gore Vidal)
Everybody denies I am a genius - but nobody ever called me one! (Orson Welles)
Talent jogs to conclusions to which Genius takes giant leaps. (Edwin Percy Whipple)
Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one. (E. B. White)
Common sense is genius in homespun. (Alfred North Whitehead)
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius. (Oscar Wilde)
I put my talent in my work, I save my Genius for my life. (Oscar Wilde)
To elevate the little into the great is genius. (N. C. Wyeth)
However smothered under former negligence, or scattered through the dull, dark mass of common thoughts – let thy genius rise as the sun from chaos. (Edward Young)
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