Genius
From Wikiquote
A genius is an individual who successfully applies a previously unknown technique in the production of a work of art, science or calculation, or who masters and personalizes a known technique. A genius typically possesses great intelligence or remarkable abilities in a specific subject, or shows an exceptional natural capacity of intellect and/or ability, especially in the production of creative and original work, something that has never been seen or evaluated previously.
Contents |
[edit] Sourced
- Alphabetized by author
- Genius is patience.
- Anonymous proverb, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
- A genius is one who can do anything except make a living.
- Joey Adams, as quoted in The Mammoth Book of Humor (2000) by Geoff Tibballs, p. 355
- There is this difference between genius and common sense in a fox: Common sense is governed by circumstances, but circumstances is governed by genius.
- Josh Billings in Uncle Sam's Uncle Josh : Or, Josh Billings on Practically Everything (1953) edited by Donald Day, p. 120
- Genius is the faculty of doing a thing that nobody supposed could be done at all.
- Josh Billings in Uncle Sam's Uncle Josh : Or, Josh Billings on Practically Everything (1953) edited by Donald Day, p. 182
- Genius ain't anything more than elegant common sense.
- Josh Billings in Uncle Sam's Uncle Josh : Or, Josh Billings on Practically Everything (1953) edited by Donald Day, p. 182
- Talent must have memory; genius don't require it.
- Josh Billings in Uncle Sam's Uncle Josh : Or, Josh Billings on Practically Everything (1953) edited by Donald Day, p. 182
- Genius learns from nature; talent from books.
- Josh Billings in Uncle Sam's Uncle Josh : Or, Josh Billings on Practically Everything (1953) edited by Donald Day, p. 182
- Men of genius are scarce, but men of genius who use their genius for the benefit of the world are scarcer.
- Josh Billings in Uncle Sam's Uncle Josh : Or, Josh Billings on Practically Everything (1953) edited by Donald Day, p. 182
- La génie n'est utre chose qu'une grande aptitude à la patience.
- Genius is nothing else than a great aptitude for patience.
- George-Louis de Buffon, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
- Genius is nothing else than a great aptitude for patience.
- Genius is bound to be indulgent. It should know human errors so well—has, with its large luminous forces, such errors itself when it deigns to be human, that, where others may scorn, genius should only pity.
- Edward Bulwer-Lytton, What Will He Do with It? (1867), p. 202
- "Genius" (which means transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all).
- Thomas Carlyle, Life of Fredrick the Great, Bk. IV, ch. 3 (1858–1865)
- Perfect works are rare, because they must be produced at the happy moment when taste and genius unite; and this rare conjuncture, like that of certain planets, appears to occur only after the revolution of several cycles, and only lasts for an instant.
- François-René de Chateaubriand, as quoted in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893) selected and compiled by James Wood.
- A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition.
- Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon : or, Many Things in Few Words (1821), p. 109
- Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius.
- Benjamin Disraeli, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
- Every unhappy genius dreams to be in the place of a happy fool!
- Mehmet ildan, Quotations
- The continuous capacity of genius to surpass understanding remains a human constant.
- Denis Dutton, "Of Human Accomplishment", The New Criterion, February 2004
- Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.
- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, in Aphorisms (1779 - 1788) as translated by Franz H. Mautner and Henry Hatfield
- There are people who possess not so much genius as a certain talent for perceiving the desires of the century, or even of the decade, before it has done so itself.
- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, in Notebook D (1773-1775), Aphorism 70
- It is in the gift for employing all the vicissitudes of life to one's own advantage and to that of one's craft that a large part of genius consists.
- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, in Notebook K (1789-1793) Aphorism 48
- Genius still means to me, in my Russian, fastidiousness and pride of phrase, a unique dazzling gift. The gift of James Joyce, and not the talent of Henry James.
- Vladimir Nabokov, as quoted in What Is the Sangha? : The Nature of Spritual Community (2001) by Sangharakshita, p. 136
- Über Naive und Sentimentalische Dichtung.
- Every true genius is bound to be naive.
- Friedrich Schiller, Schiller's Poems (1905), p. 200
- Every true genius is bound to be naive.
- Genius is a capacity for taking trouble.
- Leslie Stephen, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
- Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered — either by themselves or by others. But for the Civil War, Lincoln and Grant and Sherman and Sheridan would not have been discovered, nor have risen into notice.
- Mark Twain in notes (26 May 1907); published in The Autobiography of Mark Twain (1959) edited by Charles Neider
- Genius is an intuitive talent for labor.
- Jan Walæus, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
- Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.
- E. B. White, in One Man's Meat (1944)
[edit] Unsourced
- Every man of genius is considerably helped by being dead.
- Every one of us is a genius, but not necessarily in the right epoch.
- I can't tell you if genius is hereditary, because heaven has granted me no offspring.
