Quotes About Genius

Any damn fool can make something complex; it takes a genius to make something simple.

Any damn fool can get complicated. It takes genius to attain simplicity.

God thinks within geniuses, dreams within poets, and sleeps within the rest of us.

Oh, sure. Brian Wilson. The big genius! Well, he wasn't such a genius when he was wetting his bed at age 14! He wasn't so cute then, was he?

Okay. But, he didn't do anything to hurt people. OW: Well, he destroyed [Erich] von Stroheim, as a man and as an artist. Literally destroyed him. And von Stroheim at that moment was, I think, demonstrably the most gifted director in Hollywood. Von Stroheim was the greatest argument against the producer. He was so clearly a genius, and so clearly should have been left alone—no matter what crazy thing he did—

As Baudelaire remarked, even Balzac's concierges have genius; everyone in his world is "stuffed with willpower from head to toe.

When Michelangelo finally completed painting over 400 life size figures on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he is reported to have written, "If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful after all." What appeared to his admirers to have flowed from sheer genius had required four torturous years of work and dedication.20

Her eyes gleamed as bright with genius as any worthy man's

And again, the genius of the laws is their ambiguity, not their clarity, for their ambiguity is the very thing that allows them to gain new life with each passing year, ensuring that past and present forever remain connected and in dialogue.

Mediocrity recognizes nothing higher than itself. It takes talent to appreciate genius.