Quotes About Talent

No aru taka wa, tsume o kakusu, as the Japanese saying goes. The hawk with talent hides its talons.

But when she got going, on numbers like "Pulse Fiction" and "Delancey Street Blues," she had that same air of having been possessed by the instrument, as though the piano was a demon and she its exhilarated amanuensis.

The hawk with talent hides its talons.

Girls are impressed by boys who can cook.

It took me twenty years of living with my father to accept the idea that being good could be good enough. You know what talent is? The curse of expectation. As a kid you have to deal with that, beat it somehow. If you can write, you think God put you on earth to blow Shakespeare away. Or if you can paint, maybe you think - I did - that God put you on earth to blow your father away.

One cannot increase one's talent—that comes with the package—but it is possible to keep talent from shrinking.

Mr. Robertson Davies has also suggested in his Deptford Trilogy that the same great truism which applies to writing, painting, picking horses at the track, and telling lies in a sincerely believable way, also applies to magic: some people got the knack, and some people don't. Hilly didn't.

What is needed out there, and what is my unique strength, my gift?

If you want to have more freedom, more latitude in your job, be a more responsible, a more helpful, a more contributing employee. If you want to be trusted, be trustworthy. If you want the secondary greatness of recognized talent, focus first on primary greatness of character.

Many people with secondary greatness - that is, social recognition for their talents - lack primary greatness of goodness in their character

I have found this to be true in organizations as well as in individual lives. In an organization, the physical dimension is expressed in economic terms. The mental or psychological dimension deals with the recognition, development, and use of talent. The social/emotional dimension has to do with human relations, with how people are treated. And the spiritual dimension deals with finding meaning through purpose or contribution and through organizational integrity.

you want the secondary greatness of recognized talent, focus first on primary greatness of character.

Many people with secondary greatness—that is, social recognition for their talents—lack primary greatness or goodness in their character.

A sniper is like a genius - it's not enough to be one, you have to be one at something.

Despite a lack of natural ability, I did have the one element necessary to all early creativity: naïveté, that fabulous quality that keeps you from knowing just how unsuited you are for what you are about to do.

Be undeniably good.

Thankfully, perseverance is a great substitute for talent.

It was easy to be great. Every entertainer has a night when everything is clicking. These nights are accidental and statistical: Like lucky cards in poker, you can count on them occurring over time. What was hard was to be good, consistently good, night after night, no matter what the abominable circumstances.

Be so good they can't ignore you

Be so good they can't ignore you.

When you're that engaged, you'll run circles around other people even if they are more naturally talented.

If you bake a cupcake, the world has one more cupcake. If you become a circus clown, the world has one more squirt of seltzer down someone's pants. But if you win an Olympic gold medal, the world will not have one more Olympic gold medalist. It will just have you instead of someone else.

The one commonality was encouragement, a lot of encouragement. In each case, there was a parent or close relative who rewarded any display of talent, and ignored or punished the opposite. Prodigies, it seemed, were made, not born.

Few of Bloom's research subjects showed any great promise as children. Instead, the one commonality was encouragement, a lot of encouragement. In each case, there was a parent or close relative who rewarded any display of talent, and ignored the opposite. Prodigies, it seemed, were made, not born. As Bloom later told reporters: "We were looking for exceptional kids, but what we found were exceptional conditions.