Talent

Talent is generally considered to be an innate, personal gift possessed by relatively few people. In essence, someone with talent has an aptitude to do certain things.

Sourced

• Talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it.
  • Maya Angelou (b. 1928), American author and performer. Black Women Writers at Work, Ch. 1, by Claudia Tate (1983).

• Genius … means the transcendent capacity of taking trouble.
  • Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881). Life of Frederick the Great, Book iv. Chap. iii.

• Entertainment is in my genes – as I like to say.
  • Jack Dee, English stand-up comedian. From his interview on, The One Show, BBC 1 television, 29th October 2009.

• Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,
  Sich ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt.
  Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Torquato Tasso (1790) i, 2.

• ...but talent is a dreadfully cheap commodity, cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work and study; a constant process of honing. Talent is a dull knife that will cut nothing unless it is wielded with great force...
  • Stephen King, Danse Macabre (1981).

• Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is.
  • James Russell Lowell (1819–1891). Rousseau and the Sentimentalists.

• It is a very rare thing for a man of talent to succeed by his talent.
  • Joseph Roux, Meditations of a Parish Priest (1886).

• Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see. With people with only modest ability, modesty is mere honesty; but with those who possess great talent, it is hypocrisy.
  • Arthur Schopenhauer, as quoted in The Little Book of Bathroom Philosophy: Daily Wisdom from the Greatest Thinkers (2004) by Gregory Bergman, p. 137.

• To THINK BIG and to use our talent doesn't mean we don't have difficulties on the way. We will - we all do. How we view those problems determines how we end up.
  • Ben Carson, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story. (p.232)

• THINK BIG means opening our horizons, reaching for new possibilities in our lives, being open to whatever God has in store for us on the road ahead.
  T=TALENT : If you recognize your talents, use them appropriately, and choose a field that uses those talents, you will rise to the top of your field.
  H=HONEST : If we live by the rule of honesty and accept our problems, we can go far down the road of achievement.
  I=INSIGHT : If we observe and reflect and commit ourselves to giving our best, we will come out on top.
  N=NICE : If we are nice to others, other respond to us in the same way, and we can give our best for each other.
  K=KNOWLEDGE : If we make every attempt to increase our knowledge in order to use it for human go, it will make a difference in us and in our world.
  B=BOOKS : If we commit ourselves to reading thus increasing our knowledge, only God limits how far we can go in this world.
  I=IN-DEPTH LEARNING : If we develop in-depth knowledge, it will enable us to give our best to others and help to make a better world.
  G=GOD : If we acknowledge our need for God , he will help us.
  • Ben Carson, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story. (p. 152)

• Anyone with a normal brain has the capacity to do almost anything, but when one has special gifts or talents (and everyone has) and takes advantage of and develops these talents – that person is likely to excel.
  • Ben Carson, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story. (p. 160)

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 777.

• Magni est ingenii revocare mentem a sensibus, et cogitationem a consuetudine abducere.
  • It is a proof of great talents to recall the mind from the senses, and to separate thought from habit.
  • Cicero, Tusculanarum Disputationum, I. 16.

• Occultæ musices nullus respectus.
  • Concealed talent brings no reputation.
  • Erasmus, Adagia; Suetonius, Nero, 20.

• Ne forçons point notre talent;
  Nous ne ferions rien avec grâce:
  Jamais un lourdaud, quoi qu'il fasse,
  Ne saurait passer pour galant.
  • Let us not overstrain our talents, lest we do nothing gracefully: a clown, whatever he may do, will never pass for a gentleman.
  • La Fontaine, Fables, IV. 5.

• Talent is that which is in a man's power! Genius is that in whose power a man is.
  • Lowell, Among my Books. Rousseau and the Sentimentalists.

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

• The way to attain to larger gifts is to employ the gifts you have. Give Jesus the one talent, and then He may trust you with two. If you cannot speak glibly in a prayer-meeting, then stammer out your heart's thanks in the best fashion you can. It may be that your few broken words may accomplish more than another man's fluent harangues.
  • Theodore L. Cuyler, p. 575.

• Men of splendid talents are generally too quick, too volatile, too adventurous, and too unstable to be much relied on; whereas men of common abilities, in a regular, plodding routine of business, act with more regularity and greater certainty. Men of the best intellectual abilities are apt to strike off suddenly, like the tangent of a circle, and cannot be brought into their orbits by attraction or gravity — they often act with such eccentricity as to be lost in the vortex of their own reveries. Brilliant talents in general are like the ignes fatui; they excite wonder, but often mislead. They are not, however, without their use; like the fire from the flint, once produced, it may be converted, by solid, thinking men, to very salutary and noble purposes.
  • John Trusler, p. 575.

• The man that wrapped up his talent in the napkin and said, "Lo, there thou hast that is thine," was too sanguine. There was never an unused talent rolled up in a handkerchief yet, but when it was taken out and put into the scales, it was lighter than when it was committed to the keeping of the earth.
  • Alexander Maclaren, p. 576.

• "Take therefore the talent from him." It is being taken away rapidly, and the shreds of it will very soon be all that is left. Your religious nature will finally become a virtually exterminated organ. The purpose you have at some future time to use your talent avails nothing. It is going from you, and, before you know it, will be utterly, irrevocably gone. My friends, there is not an hour to lose. Only with the greatest difficulty will you be able, now, to gather up yourself and open your closing gates to the entrance of God and His salvation.
  • Horace Bushnell, p. 576.