198 Genius Quotes

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.

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.

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

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

Since when was genius found respectable?

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.

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.

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.

Every man is a potential genius until he does something.

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

Genius sees the answer before the question.

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

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.

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.

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

Genius is sorrow's child.

Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

England's genius filled all measure Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure, Gave to the mind its emperor, And life was larger than before: Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit. The men who lived with him became Poets, for the air was fame.

It is to deny, what the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition and talents will not continue to spring up amongst us. And, when they do, they will as naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion, as others have so done before them. The question then, is, can that gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others? Most certainly it cannot. Many great and good men sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would inspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle. What! think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon? - Never! Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored. - It sees no distinction in adding story to story, upon the monuments of fame, erected to the memory of others. It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen. Is it unreasonable then to expect, that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us? And when such a one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.

It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing. ~ Ch. 2

She sang beyond the genius of the sea

Delacroix etait passionnement amoureux de la passion, et froidement determine a chercher les moyens d'exprimer la passion de la maniere la plus visible. Dans ce double caractere, nous trouvons, disons-le en passant, les deux signes qui marquent les plus solides genies, genies extremes.

Hamilton was the greatest constructive mind in all our history and I should come pretty near saying... in the history of modern statesmen in any country.

Einstein was a giant. His head was in the clouds, but his feet were on the ground. Those of us who are not so tall have to choose!

C'est bien la le genie: l'intelligence qui connait ses frontieres.

I believe no woman could have invented calculus.

It would be lovely to think I had become a genius,' he smiles, 'but the fact is that I've forgotten most of it. Occasionally I can be watching University Challenge and a stray fact emerges from the recesses of my subconscious that I didn't know I knew, but for the most part I'm as vague on the details as I ever was.

Enthusiasm: 'Genius is always accompanied by enthusiasm.'

What a creative genius - what an inventor... A guy like that, you just sit back and say, okay, I'll never get there!

I will add that I have recently received from Hungary a little paper on non-Euclidean geometry in which I rediscover all my own ideas and results worked out with great elegance... The writer is a very young Austrian officer, the son of one of my early friends, with whom I often discussed the subject in 1798, although my ideas were at that time far removed from the development and maturity which they have received through the original reflections of this young man. I consider the young geometer J. Bolyai a genius of the first rank.

Le genie n'est que l'enfance retrouvee a volonte, l'enfance douee maintenant, pour s'exprimer, d'organes virils et de l'esprit analytique qui lui permet d'ordonner la somme de materiaux involontairement amassee.

Even Voltaire's father could not make a lawyer out of a genius. To be a good lawyer, one must have a mind and a disposition to venerate the past; a respect for precedents; a belief in the wisdom and the sanctity of the dead. Voltaire had genius, imagination, feeling, and poetry, and these gifts always have been, and always will be, incompatible with the practice of law.

He is thinner, taller, younger - more boyish-looking - than expected, but he is also the shyest and most nervous human being I have ever seen. He chews not merely his nails but his fingers, twitches his pouty mouth and chin, chain-smokes, wiggles his nose in constant adjustment of his spectacles, looks querulous one moment and ready to cry the next. His hands tremble, he stutters, his whole frame wobbles when he shakes hands:There is no betrayal of the thoughts behind those frightened, very intelligent eyes.

Genius is the ability to look at things simply.

There comes Poe, with his Raven, like Barnaby Rudge, Three-fifths of him genius, and two-fifths sheer fudge.

If Fermi had been born a few years earlier, one could well imagine him discovering Rutherford's atomic nucleus, and then developing Bohr's theory of the hydrogen atom. If this sounds like hyperbole, anything about Fermi is likely to sound like hyperbole.

Delacroix etait passionnement amoureux de la passion, et froidement determine a chercher les moyens d'exprimer la passion de la maniere la plus visible. Dans ce double caractere, nous trouvons, disons-le en passant, les deux signes qui marquent les plus solides genies, genies extremes.

Sometimes men come by the name of genius in the same way that certain insects come by the name of centipede - not because they have a hundred feet, but because most people can't count above fourteen.

We must not seek to abstract from the busts of the great Greeks and Romans rules for the visible form of genius as long as we cannot contrast them with Greek blockheads.

Rossini, in music, is the genius of sheer animal spirits. It is a species as inferior to that of Mozart, as the cleverness of a smart boy is to that of a man of sentiment; but it is genius nevertheless.

L'homme qui peut empreindre perpetuellement la pensee dans le fait est un homme de genie; mais l'homme qui a le plus de genie ne le deploie pas a tous les instants, il ressemblerait trop a Dieu.

To say that a great genius is half-mad, while recognizing his artistic prowess, is worth as much as saying that he was rheumatic, or that he suffered from diabetes. Madness, in fact, is a medical expression to which a balanced critic should pay no more heed than he would to the accusation of heresy brought by the theologian, or to the accusation of immorality brought by the public prosecutor.

The spark once transmitted may smoulder for generations under ashes, but the appointed time will come, and it will flare up to warm the world. God never allows waste. And we fools rub our eyes and wonder, when we see genius come out of the gutter. It didn't begin there. We tell ourselves that Shakespeare was the son of a woolpedlar, and Napoleon of a farmer, and Luther of a peasant, and we hold up our hands at the marvel. But who knows what kings and prophets they had in their ancestry!

It is due to him that the Roman concepts of public duty and service are still a living force among us. Historians have denied him the name of genius which they grant readily to Alexander and Julius and Napoleon; but if it be not genius to re-make and re-direct the world by a courageous realism and supreme powers of character and mind, then the word has no meaning in human speech.

For me, Kate Bush was always a trump card when the tiresome 'question' of female artistic genius came up. ... Before disgust stopped me getting dragged into these skirmishes, I had a ready arsenal of Girl Greats - Patti Smith, Bjork, Nina Simone, w:Delia Derbyshire:, Polly Harvey, and so on. And yet, there would often be some caveat why genius eluded my candidates (ripped off Dylan etc). Until we would get to Kate. Female genius? Kate Bush. End of. Aerial, the first Kate Bush album in a young lifetime (12 years), re-establishes the fact. It is extraordinary - jaw-dropping, no less.

It's clear Bush is still a force to be reckoned with. The problem, though, with female genius - for many men at least - is that very frequently it is not like male genius. And with its songs about children, washing machines going 'slooshy sloshy', Joan of Arc, Bush's mother, not to mention the almost pagan sensuality that runs through here like a pulse, Aerial is, arguably, the most female album in the world, ever. ... the artistry here is so dizzying, the ambition and scope so vast, that even the deafest, most inveterate misogynist could not fail to acknowledge it. Genius. End of.

Is it possible that seemingly incredible geniuses like Bach and Shakespeare and Einstein were not in fact superhuman, but simply plagiarists, copying great stuff from the future?

When all of genius which can perish dies.

I used to worship the mighty genius of Michael Angelo - that man who was great in poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture - great in every thing he undertook. But I do not want Michael Angelo for breakfast - for luncheon - for dinner - for tea - for supper - for between meals. I like a change, occasionally.

Chaplin you got to go with. Chaplin is a man whose talents is such that you have to gamble. First off, comedy is his backyard. He's a genius, a cinematic genius. A comedic talent without peer.

The Leonardo da Vinci of our time.

The genius of our century - centuries rarely produce a genius. Look at this bad luck of ours, that great genius of our era was granted to the Turkish nation.

Hawthorne's career was probably as tranquil and uneventful a one as ever fell to the lot of a man of letters; it was almost strikingly deficient in incident, in what may be called the dramatic quality. Few men of equal genius and of equal eminence can have led on the whole a simpler life... He produced, in quantity, but little. His works consist of four novels and the fragment of another, five volumes of short tales, a collection of sketches, and a couple of story-books for children. And yet some account of the man and the writer is well worth giving. Whatever may have been Hawthorne's private lot, he has the importance of being the most beautiful and most eminent representative of a literature. The importance of the literature may be questioned, but at any rate, in the field of letters, Hawthorne is the most valuable example of the American genius.

Where Hawthorne is known, he seems to be deemed a pleasant writer, with a pleasant style, - a sequestered, harmless man, from whom any deep and weighty thing would hardly be anticipated: - a man who means no meanings. But there is no man, in whom humor and love, like mountain peaks, soar to such a rapt height, as to receive the irradiations of the upper skies; - there is no man in whom humor and love are developed in that high form called genius; no such man can exist without also possessing, as the indispensable complement of these, a great, deep intellect, which drops down into the universe like a plummet. Or, love and humor are only the eyes, through which such an intellect views this world. The great beauty in such a mind is but the product of its strength.

The truth seems to be, that like many other geniuses, this Man of Mosses takes great delight in hoodwinking the world, - at least, with respect to himself. Personally, I doubt not, that he rather prefers to be generally esteemed but a so-so sort of author; being willing to reserve the thorough and acute appreciation of what he is, to that party most qualified to judge - that is, to himself. Besides, at the bottom of their natures, men like Hawthorne, in many things, deem the plaudits of the public such strong presumptive evidence of mediocrity in the object of them, that it would in some degree render them doubtful of their own powers, did they hear much and vociferous braying concerning them in the public.

. . . his playing . . . is one of those rare things that may only come once in a lifetime and even not in one person's life, it may be centuries before there is anyone like that again. He is a funny little fellow only about 30 and plays with his eyes shut practically the whole time, every note every pause and tone colour is reflected in his face and to hear him again, to draw the bow across is a revelation.

An established religion turns to deathlike apathy the sublimest ebullitions of most exalted genius, and the spirit-stirring truths of a mind inflamed with the desire of benefiting mankind. It is the characteristic of a cold and tame spirit to imagine that such doctrines as Jesus Christ promulgated are destined to follow the fortunes and share the extinction of a popular religion.

The Michelangelos of this world are not to be imitated; it is too difficult, and too dangerous.

Of what use is genius, if the organ is too convex or too concave and cannot find a focal distance within the actual horizon of human life?

Nor mourn the unalterable Days That Genius goes and Folly stays.

Genius borrows nobly. When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies: 'Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life.'

There are two kinds of geniuses: the 'ordinary' and the 'magicians'. An ordinary genius is a fellow whom you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what they've done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians. Even after we understand what they have done it is completely dark. Richard Feynman is a magician of the highest calibre.

Several conversations that Feynman and I had involved the remarkable abilities of other physicists. In one of these conversations, I remarked to Feynman that I was impressed by Steven Hawking's ability to do path integration in his head. 'Ahh, that's not so great', Feynman replied. 'It's much more interesting to come up with the technique like I did, rather than to be able to do the mechanics in your head.' Feynman wasn't being immodest, he was quite right. The true secret to genius is in creativity, not in technical mechanics.

He is a second Dirac. Only this time human.

Before they made S J Perelman they broke the mold.

Our myriad-minded Shakespeare.

There is no method in his talk: he wanders like a man sailing among many currents, whithersoever his lazy mind directs him; and, what is more unpleasant, he preaches, or rather soliloquises:I reckon him a man of great and useless genius: a strange, not at all a great man.

He was the first poet I ever knew. His genius at that time had angelic wings, and fed on manna. He talked on for ever; and you wished him to talk on for ever. His thoughts did not seem to come with labour and effort; but as if borne on the gusts of genius, and as if the wings of his imagination lifted him from off his feet.

As far as Sharon's marriage was concerned, all I can tell you is that Sharon and Roman were in love. They were a combination of beauty and genius.

But Shakespear's Magick could not copy'd be, Within that Circle none durst walk but he.

Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of SHAKSPEARE's wit.

He is terribly rare. He is like Bach, who in his time had a great concentration of ability, essence, knowledge, a spread of music. Astaire has that same concentration of genius; there is so much of the dance in him that it has been distilled

He's a genius...a classical dancer like I never saw in my life

The truth seems to be, that like many other geniuses, this Man of Mosses takes great delight in hoodwinking the world,-at least, with respect to himself. Personally, I doubt not, that he rather prefers to be generally esteemed but a so-so sort of author; being willing to reserve the thorough and acute appreciation of what he is, to that party most qualified to judge-that is, to himself. Besides, at the bottom of their natures, men like Hawthorne, in many things, deem the plaudits of the public such strong presumptive evidence of mediocrity in the object of them, that it would in some degree render them doubtful of their own powers, did they hear much and vociferous braying concerning them in the public

When we speak of the aim and Art observable in Shakespeare's works, we must not forget that Art belongs to Nature; that it is, so to speak, self-viewing, self-imitating, self-fashioning Nature. The Art of a well-developed genius is far different from the Artfulness of the Understanding, of the merely reasoning mind. Shakspeare was no calculator, no learned thinker; he was a mighty, many-gifted soul, whose feelings and works, like products of Nature, bear the stamp of the same spirit; and in which the last and deepest of observers will still find new harmonies with the infinite structure of the Universe; concurrences with later ideas, affinities with the higher powers and senses of man. They are emblematic, have many meanings, are simple and inexhaustible, like products of Nature; and nothing more unsuitable could be said of them than that they are works of Art, in that narrow mechanical acceptation of the word.

He wasn't just a genius, he had the genius's impatience with the whole idea of doing something again. He reinvented an art form, exhausted its possibilities, and just left it. There is always something frightening about that degree of inventiveness... He didn't lose his powers. He just lost interest in proving that he possessed them. ~ Clive James

I remember being moved to tears when Peter said: 'I know I was funny but I know I won't improve, I won't get any better'. I was lucky to be around when he was at his peak. Verbally he was the most witty man that I have ever come across and strangely inventive. ~ Dudley Moore