Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
Vladimir Nabokov
As diamond cuts diamond, and one hone smooths a second, all the parts of intellect are whetstones to each other; and genius, which is but the result of their mutual sharpening, is character too.
Cyrus Augustus Bartol
Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.
Henri Frederic Amiel
There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
Oscar Lavant
The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
Anonymous
Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such We scarcely can praise it or blame it too much; Who, born for the universe, narrow'd his mind, And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.
Oliver Goldsmith
Genius is an infinite capacity for taking life by the scruff of the neck.
Christopher Quill
Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, But Genius must be born; and never can be taught.
John Dryden
Genius and its rewards are briefly told: A liberal nature and a niggard doom, A difficult journey to a splendid tomb.
John Forster
When Nature has work to be done, she create a genius to do it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
One of the strongest characteristics of genius is the power of lighting its own fire.
John Watson Foster
Genius does what it must, and talent does what it can.
Edward G. Bulwer-lytton
When a true genius appears in this world you may know him by the sign that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
Jonathan Swift
Every work of Genius is tinctured by the feelings, and often originates in the events of times.
Isaac D'Israeli
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
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.
G. C. Lichtenberg
Philosophy becomes poetry, and science imagination, in the enthusiasm of genius.
Isaac D'Israeli
Genius without education is like silver in the mine.
Benjamin Franklin
Genius is the ability to act rightly without precedent--the power to do the right thing the first time.
Elbert Hubbard
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
John Dryden
True genius sees with the eyes of a child and thinks with the brain of a genii.
Puzant Kevork Thomajan
I don't want to be a genius--I have enough problems just trying to be a man.
Albert Camus
Genius hath electric power which earth can never tame.
Lydia M Child
Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.
Thomas A. Edison
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Albert Einstein
But genius must be born, and never can be taught.
John Dryden
Genius develops in quiet places, character out in the full current of human life.
Goethe
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.
E. F. Schumacher
In every work of genius we recognise our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.
Joseph Joubert
No great genius is without an admixture of madness.
Aristotle
The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them which we are missing.
Gamal Abdel Nasser
Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius--and a lot of courage--to move in the opposite direction.
John Dryden
Genius . . . means the transcendent capacity of taking trouble.
Thomas Carlyle
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
Elbert Hubbard
Genius is the power of lighting one's own fire.
John Forster
Genius is only patience.
George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
Oscar Wilde
Genius is intensity. The man who gets anything worth having is the man who goes after his object as a bulldog goes after a cat - with every fiber in him tense with eagerness and determination.
C. Holman
Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use.
William Hazlitt
Nobody in the game of football should be called a genius. A genius is somebody like Norman Einstein.
Joe Theisman
Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius.
Benjamin Disraeli
The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The first and last thing required of genius is the love of truth.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Fortune has rarely condescended to be the companion of genius.
Isaac D'Israeli
Doing easily what others find it difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.
Henri-Frederic Amiel
To think, and to feel, constitute the two grand divisions of men of genius--the men of reasoning and the men of imagination.
Isaac D'Israeli
Everyone is born with genius, but most people only keep it a few minutes.
Edgard Varese
When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.
Aristotle
Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.
Horace
Vivutur ingenio, that damn'd motto there Seduced me first to me a wicked player.
George Farquhar
Many men of genius must arise before a particular man of genius can appear.
Isaac D'Israeli
It is the privilege of genius that to it life never grows commonplace as to the rest of us.
James Russell Lowell
Alexander Hamilton:
Men give me credit for some genius. All the genius I have lies in this; when I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort that I have made is what people are pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought.
The failure of women to produce genius of the first rank in most of the supreme forms of human effort has been used to block the way of all women of talent and ambition for intellectual achievement in a manner that would be amusingly absurd were it not so monstrously unjust and socially harmful.
Woman's Share in Social Culture, 1912
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.
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.
The kind of intelligence a genius has is a different sort of intelligence. The thinking of a genius does not proceed logically. It leaps with great ellipses. It pulls knowledge from God knows where.
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
Since when was genius found respectable?
Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.
Eveyone is a genius at least once a year. A real genius has his original ideas closer together.
Jean Baptiste Henry Lacordaire:
We are the leaves of one branch, the drops of one sea, the flowers of one garden.
The word "genius" isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.
NFL football quarterback and sports analyst
Society develops wit, but its contemplation alone forms genius.
The exercise of an extraordinary gift is the supremest pleasure in life.
There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
In the republic of mediocrity genius is dangerous.
There is no great genius without some touch of madness.
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
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.
Men of genius are meteors destined to burn themselves out in lighting up their age. ~Napoleon Bonaparte, Discours de Lyon, 1771
A genius is one who shoots at something no one else can see - and hits it. ~Author Unknown
Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together. ~Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one. ~E.B. White
I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone. ~John F. Kennedy, in an address to Nobel Prize winners
Every true genius is bound to be naive. ~J.C.F. von Schiller
Genius, by its very intensity, decrees a special path of fire for its vivid power. ~Phillips Brooks
I have known no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or defect, either physical or spiritual, for what the gods had given him. ~Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson, 1911
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
Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by themselves or by others. ~Mark Twain
Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is. ~James Russell Lowell, Literary Essays
The reluctance to put away childish things may be a requirement of genius. ~Rebecca Pepper Sinkler
If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Every man of genius is considerably helped by being dead. ~Robert S. Lynd
In every work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self Reliance," Essays, 1841
Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius. ~George Bernard Shaw
There is no great genius without some touch of madness. ~Lucius Annaeus Seneca, "On Tranquillity of the Mind," Moral Essays
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
When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. ~Jonathan Swift
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction. ~E.F. Schumacher
Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the company of vulgar people. ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Table Talk
Genius ain't anything more than elegant common sense. ~Josh Billings
Genius is nothing but a great aptitude for patience. ~George-Louis de Buffon
I can't tell you if genius is hereditary, because heaven has granted me no offspring. ~James McNeill Whistler