Quotes About Genius

The genius of any single man can no more equal learning, than a private purse hold way with the exchequer.

The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men's genius.

Aristoteles quidem ait: 'Omnes ingeniosos melancholicos esse.' Aristotle says that all men of genius are melancholy.

What you tend to find in the personal lives of brilliant men is devastation akin to a nuclear bomb going off.

Put a very clever man next to a genius, his brightness will immediately turn to dullness!

Any man's greatness is a tribute to the nobility of all mankind, so when we celebrate the genius of [Leo] Tolstoy, we say, "Look! One of our boys made it! Look what we're capable of!"

It is among men of genius and science that atheism alone is found.

The number of different aspects that the face of a man has assumed may be taken almost as a physiognomical measure of his ... genius.

The applause and the favour of our fellow-men Fan even a spark of genius to a flame.

But genius looks forward: the eyes of men are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates.

It is not what talents or genius a man has, but how he is to his talents, that constitutes friendship and character. The man thatstands by himself, the universe stands by him also.

Europe has always owed to oriental genius its divine impulses. What these holy bards said, all sane men found agreeable and true.

Intellect is a fire; rash and pitiless it melts this wonderful bone-house which is called man. Genius even, as it is the greatestgood, is the greatest harm.

What is it men love in Genius, but its infinite hope, which degrades all it has done? Genius counts all its miracles poor and short. Its own idea it never executed.

The young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is.

It is perseverance, and not genius that takes a man to the top. Rome is full of unrecognized geniuses. Only perseverance enables you to move forward in the world.

Men of genius supply the substance of history, while the mass of men are but the critical filter, the limiting, slackening, passive force needed for the modification of ideas supplied by genius.

But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man, is the severest satire.... The greater the genius, the keener the edge of the satire.

A man cannot wheedle nor overawe his Genius. It requires to be conciliated by nobler conduct than the world demands or can appreciate.

The cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy. It is the only dictator that free man acknowledges. It is the only security that free man desires.

Talent works for money and fame; the motive which moves genius to productivity is, on the other hand, less easy to determine.

A man of talent will strive for money and reputation; but the spring that moves genius to the production of its works is not as easy to name

In real estate, you make 10% of your money because you're a genius and 90% because you catch a great wave.

The mother of useful arts is necessity; that of the fine arts is luxury. For father the former has intellect; the latter genius, which itself is a kind of luxury.