Quotes About Genius

In the faculty of writing nonsense, stupidity is no match for genius.

The products of art and science owe their existence not merely to the effort of the great geniuses that created them, but also to the unnamed drudgery of their contemporaries. There is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.

That's why I've just gone on … collecting this particular kind of stuff – what you might call riff-raff. There's not a book here, Lawford, that hasn't at least a glimmer of the real thing in it – just Life, seen through a living eye, and felt. As for literature, and style, and all that gallimaufry, don't fear for them if your author has the ghost of a hint of genius in his making.

Was he smart? No, not exceptionally. Instead, he was a genius.

The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.

Industry is a far better horse to ride a genius.

In my profession it isn't a question of telling good literature from bad. Really good literature is seldom appreciated in its own day. The best authors die poor, the bad ones make money — it's always been like that. What do I, an agent, get out of a literary genius who won't be discovered for another hundred years? I'll be dead myself then. Successful incompetents are what I need.

Marriage requires a special talent, like acting. Monogamy requires genius.

The Painter who seeks popularity in Art closes the door upon his own genius.

Rising genius always shoots out its rays from among the clouds, but these will gradually roll away and disappear as it ascends to its steady luster.

To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a corn-field.

Behind a little art there is a great artist.

Stupidity has its sublime as well as genius, and he who carries that quality to absurdity has reached it, which is always a source of pleasure to sensible people.

Spencer wasn't crazy. He was incredibly calculating. Brilliantly so. Even she could admit that. Under different circumstances, Spencer might have been considered a genius. But she refused to believe that. He was sick. Twisted. But human.

Dr Seraphina gazed at Gabriella with a cool, assessing eye. "What do you believe Gabriella?" "I believe that if we do not protect our traditions from those who would destroy them, soon there will be nothing left to interpret." "Ah, so you are a warrior, then," Dr Seraphina said, challenging Gabriella. "There are always those who would put on armour and go into battle. but the real genius is in finding a way to get what you desire without dying for it.

Beauty like hers is genius.

The antiquarians were correct in this, that Eastern Kentucky has a distinctive voice, one that does derive from Britain and Ireland but whose genius was too hardy to be tamed and has flowered at the Grand Ole Opry.

Genius has its limitations. Insanity, not so much.

Mike Patton is a genius... It is definitely the hardest music I've ever played.

However, it is possible to be a genius and still be rather stupid,

It has been written that so much of life is preparation, so much is routine, and so much is retrospect that the purest essence of anyone's genius contracts itself to a precious few hours.

Yeah, you're a regular Mozart...well, except for the whole music thing.

Sorry I'm so brilliant," Michael said. " 'Tis a burden I must bear.

There is no way to be truly great in this world. We are impaled on the crook of conditioning. A fish that is in the water has no choice that he is. Genius would have it that we swim in sand. We are fish and we drown.