Quotes About Talent

Talent is something rare and beautiful and precious, and it must not be allowed to go to waste.

When I came to the CIA in the mid-'90s, our graduating class of case officers was unbelievably low. Now, after years of rebuilding, our training programs and putting our best efforts to recruit the most talented men and women, we are graduating more clandestine officers than at any time in the history of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Genius is only a greater aptitude for patience.

Genius is nothing but a great aptitude for patience.

What is the good of being a genius if you cannot use it as an excuse for being unemployed?

My mother had that talent for endowing any place she was with dignity and charm. She behaved elegantly and politely, and thus hoped to change the world.

I know it was wonderful, but I don't know how I did it.

No man was ever great without a touch of divine afflatus.

Some people can carry a tune, but they seem to stagger under the load.

With people of only moderate ability modesty is mere honesty; but with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.

Talent isn't enough. You need motivation-and persistence, too: what Steinbeck called a blend of faith and arrogance. When you're young, plain old poverty can be enough, along with an insatiable hunger for recognition. You have to have that feeling of "I'll show them." If you don't have it, don't become a writer.

Handel was a man of the world; but Bach was a world of a man.

The sonatas of Mozart are unique; they are too easy for children, and too difficult for artists.

He could fiddle all the bugs off a sweet-potato vine.

The good composer is slowly discovered, the bad composer is slowly found out.

Oboe - an ill woodwind that nobody blows good.

Had I learned to fiddle, I should have done nothing else.

Mozart is the human incarnation of the divine force of creation.

If I had my life to live over, I wish I could be a great pianist or something.

Just because you're beautiful, they think you can't act.... I've got a lot more to prove.

Nothing in the world can take place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful individuals with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

Without perseverance talent is a barren bed.

Epigram: a wisecrack that has played Carnegie Hall.

Genius is the gold in the mine; talent is the miner that works and brings it out.