Quotes About Genius

never mind about his genius, Mr. Pesca. We don't want genius in this country unless it is accompanied by respectability.

Our democratic dogma has leveled not only all voters but all leaders; we delight to show that living geniuses are only mediocrities, and that dead ones are myths. If

the function of life is to bring about not the betterment of the majority, who, taken as individuals, are the most worthless types, but the creation of genius, the development and elevation of superior personalities.

And then, again, the more distinctly a man knows—the more intelligent he is—the more pain he has; the man who is gifted with genius suffers most of all.

The lazy will always attribute genius to some 'inspiration' that comes for mere waiting.

Nor may we define progress in terms of happiness, for idiots are happier than geniuses, and those whom we most respect seek not happiness but greatness.

science can get along with talent, but art requires genius.

rules were not made for geniuses;

One day he asked a visitor whence he came. "From Mr. Haller's." "He is a great man," said Voltaire; "a great poet, a great naturalist, a great philosopher, almost a universal genius." "What you say, sir, is the more admirable, as Mr. Haller does not do you the same justice." "Ah," said Voltaire, "perhaps we are both mistaken.

Only lunatics can be completely original

One work of genius is worth a thousand commentaries.

Genius consists in this, that the knowing faculty has received a considerably greater development than the service of the will demands.

The fundamental condition of genius is an abnormal predominance of sensibility and irritability over reproductive power.

Perhaps Tarde and James are right, and all history is a succession of inventions made by genius and turned into conventions by the people, a series of initiatives taken by adventurous leaders and spread among the masses of mankind by the waves of imitation.

Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius.

And is he honest who resists his genius or conscience only for the sake of present ease or gratification

The following Discourse [on art, by Sir Joshua Reynolds] is particularly Interesting to Blockheads as it endeavours to prove that There is No such thing as Inspiration & that any Man of a plain Understanding may by Thieving from Others become a Mich Angelo.

He who loves feels love descend into him and if he has wisdom may perceive it from the Poetic Genius which is the Lord.

As I was walking among the fires of Hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels looked like torment and insanity, I collected some proverbs

As I was walking among the fires of hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius

The Jewish and Christian Testaments are an original derivation from the Poetic Genius.

A Horrible thought: could this be the pattern of my life ahead? Every ambition thwarted, every dream stillborn? But a seconds reflection tells me that what I'm currently experiencing is shared by all sentient, suffering human beings, except for the very, very few: the genuinely talented - the odd, rare genius - and, of course, the exceptionally lucky swine.

perhaps it is all art and Barnum our one genius (in the arts) on the moral plane

In his eulogy, the Marquis de Condorcet observed that whosoever pursues mathematics in the future will be guided and sustained by the genius of Euler and asserted , with much justification, that all mathematicians...are his disciples.