Selected genius quotes

1. Man is a genius when he is dreaming.

2. No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.

3. Why does it so often take a genius to see the obvious?

4. No man can be a genius in slapshoes and a flat hat.

5. Genius is one of the many forms of insanity.

6. Good sense travels on the well-worn paths; genius, never. And that is why the crowd, not altogether without reason, is so ready to treat great men as lunatics.

7. Beauty like hers is genius.

8. Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other.

9. 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.

10. The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.

11. The continuous capacity of genius to surpass understanding remains a human constant.

12. And Marlowe, Webster, Fletcher, Ben, Whose fire-hearts sowed our furrows when The world was worthy of such men.

13. Since when was genius found respectable?

14. Weaknesses in men of genius are usually an exaggeration of their personal feeling; in the hands of feeble imitators they become the most flagrant blunders. Entire schools have been founded on misinterpretations of certain aspects of the masters. Lamentable mistakes have resulted from the thoughtless enthusiasm with which men have sought inspiration from the worst qualities of remarkable artists because they are unable to reproduce the sublime elements in their work.

15. 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.

16. For I think it is the case with genius that it is not when quiescent so very much above mediocrity as the difference between the two might lead us to think, but that it has the power and privilege of rising from that level to a height utterly far from mediocrity: in other words that its greatness is that it can be so great.

17. Every man is a potential genius until he does something.

18. Genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.

19. Genius sees the answer before the question.

20. Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is.

21. There is no work of genius which has not been the delight of mankind, no word of genius to which the human heart and soul have not sooner or later responded.

22. Who in the same given time can produce more than others has vigor; who can produce more and better, has talents; who can produce what none else can, has genius.

23. Neatness begets order; but from order to taste there is the same difference as from taste to genius, or from love to friendship.

24. Genius is sorrow's child.

25. Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.

26. When a nation gives birth to a man who is able to produce a great thought, another is born who is able to understand and admire it.

27. Could we have entered into the mind of Sir Isaac Newton, and have traced all the steps by which he produced his great works, we might see nothing very extraordinary in the process.

28. Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius.

29. It takes people a long time to learn the difference between talent and genius, especially ambitious young men and women.

30. 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.

31. Men of genius are not quick judges of character. Deep thinking and high imagining blunt that trivial instinct by which you and I size people up.

32. 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.

33. As far as my experience goes, men of genius are fairly gifted with the social qualities; and in this age, there appears to be a fellow-feeling among them, which had not heretofore been developed. As men, they ask nothing better than to be on equal terms with their fellow-men; and as authors, they have thrown aside their proverbial jealousy, and acknowledge a generous brotherhood.

34. Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.

35. The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable. It is no doubt a sublimer effort of genius than the Greek style; but then it depends much more on execution for its effect.

36. The genius of Coleridge is like a sunken treasure ship, and Coleridge a diver too timid and lazy to bring its riches to the surface.

37. We mustn't forget how quickly the visions of genius become the canned goods of intellectuals.

38. You don't have to be a genius to recognize one. If you did, Einstein would never have gotten invited to the White House.

39. Genius is play, and man's capacity for achieving genius is infinite, and many may achieve genius only through play.

40. The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.

41. Aeschylus had a clear eye for the commonest things. His genius was only an enlarged common sense. He adverts with chaste severity to all natural facts. His sublimity is Greek sincerity and simpleness, naked wonder which mythology had not helped to explain... Whatever the common eye sees at all and expresses as best it may, he sees uncommonly and describes with rare completeness. The multitude that thronged the theatre could no doubt go along with him to the end... The social condition of genius is the same in all ages. Aeschylus was undoubtedly alone and without sympathy in his simple reverence for the mystery of the universe.

42. No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day.

43. Whatever question there may be of his [Thoreau's] talent, there can be none, I think, of his genius. It was a slim and crooked one; but it was eminently personal. He was imperfect, unfinished, inartistic; he was worse than provincial - he was parochial; it is only at his best that he is readable.

44. Genius may conceive but patient labor must consummate.

45. First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

46. The best genius is that which absorbs and assimilates everything without doing the least violence to its fundamental destiny - that which we call character - but rather improving it and enhancing it as far as possible.

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

48. Genius has no country. It blossoms everywhere. Genius is like the light, the air. It is the heritage of all.

49. A colossus beyond the grasp of most mortals, with his totally uncompromising power, his unsensual and uningratiating way with music as with people.

50. One might say: Genius is talent exercised with courage. (p. 38e)

51. 'Has the Centre ever considered the merits of a phenomenal Kudiyattam exponent like Mani Madhav Chakkiyar - true genius?' - Leela Venkatraman- art critic, The Hindu [21]

52. In poetry there are two giants, rough Homer and fine Shakespere. In music likewise we have two giants, Beethoven, the thinker, and the superthinker Berlioz.

53. I know you. I have heard of you all my life. I know now what a scourge you have been to your country. Instead of killing fools you have been murdering the youth and genius that are necessary to make a people live and grow great. You are a fool yourself, Holmes; you began killing off the brightest and best of our countrymen three generations ago, when the old and obsolete standards of society and honor and orthodoxy were narrow and bigoted. You proved that when you put your murderous mark upon my friend Kerner - the wisest chap I ever knew in my life.

54. Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such, We scarcely can praise it, or blame it too much; Who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind, And to party gave up what was meant for mankind... Who, too deep for his hearers, still went on refining. And thought of convincing while they thought of dining; Though equal to all things, for all things unfit; Too nice for a statesman, too proud for a wit.

55. Genius lasts longer than beauty.

56. Beauty is a form of genius - is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation.

57. Genio es personalidad con dos duros de talento.

58. I grew up believing that the novel has nothing to do with pure literature. So I was taught by scholars. The art of literature, so I was taught, is something devised by men of learning. Out of the brains of scholars came rules to control the rush of genius, that wild fountain which has its source in deepest life. Genius, great or less, is the spring, and art is the sculptured shape, classical or modern, into which the waters must be forced, if scholars and critics were to be served. But the people of China did not so serve. The waters of the genius of story gushed out as they would, however the natural rocks allowed and the trees persuaded, and only common people came and drank and found rest and pleasure. For the novel in China was the peculiar product of the common people. And it was solely their property.

59. Geniuses and supergeniuses always make their own rules on sex as on everything else; they do not accept the monkey customs of their lessers.

60. In the republic of mediocrity genius is dangerous.

61. Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.

62. Theirs, too, is the word-coining genius, as if thought plunged into a sea of words and came up dripping.

63. 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.

64. Jack Benny had style from the beginning. He stood straight and walked kind of sideways as if he were being gently shoved by a touch of genius. ~ William Saroyan

65. Mozart shows a creative power of such magnitude that one can virtually say that he tossed out of himself one great masterpiece after another. ~ Claudio Arrau

66. In Bach, Beethoven and Wagner we admire principally the depth and energy of the human mind; in Mozart, the divine instinct. ~ Edvard Grieg

67. There was nothing exceptional about the physical presence of this extraordinary man; he was small and his appearance gave no sign of his genius, apart from his large intense eyes. [...] But in this ungainly body there dwelt an artistic genius such as Nature rarely bestows even upon her most treasured darlings. ~ Franz Niemetschek

68. Mozart makes you believe in God because it cannot be by chance that such a phenomenon arrives into this world and leaves such an unbounded number of unparalleled masterpieces. ~ Georg Solti

69. The most tremendous genius raised Mozart above all masters, in all centuries and in all the arts. ~ Richard Wagner

70. Great wits jump.