You may try but you can never imagine what it is to have a man’s form of genius in you, and to suffer the slavery of being a girl.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
Genius may conceive but patient labor must consummate
—Horace Mann (1796–1859) American Educator, Politician, Educationalist
Genius is eternal patience.
—Michelangelo (1475–1564) Italian Painter, Sculptor, Architect, Poet, Engineer
I really cannot know whether I am or am not the Genius you are pleased to call me, but I am very willing to put up with the mistake, if it be one. It is a title dearly enough bought by most men, to render it endurable, even when not quite clearly made out, which it never can be till the Posterity, whose decisions are merely dreams to ourselves, has sanctioned or denied it, while it can touch us no further.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
There is no work of genius which has not been the delight of mankind; no word of genius to which the human heart and soul have not, sooner or later, responded.
—James Russell Lowell (1819–91) American Poet, Critic
The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.
—Bruce Feirstein (b.1956) American Screenwriter, Humorist
First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
Genius is seldom recognized for what it is: a great capacity for hard work.
—Henry Ford (1863–1947) American Businessperson, Engineer
He is incapable of a truly good action who finds not a pleasure in contemplating the good actions of others.
—James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish Novelist, Poet
Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered—either by themselves or by others.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
To make the common marvelous is the test of genius.
—James Russell Lowell (1819–91) American Poet, Critic
A genius is one who shoots at something no one else can see—and hits it.
—Unknown
His genius he was quite content in one brief sentence to define; Of inspiration one percent, of perspiration, ninety nine.
—Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American Inventor, Scientist, Entrepreneur
Genius is another word for magic, and the whole point of magic is that it is inexplicable.
—Margot Fonteyn (1919–91) English Classical Ballet Dancer
Talent does what it can; genius does what it must.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803–73) British Novelist, Poet, Politician
Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.
—Unknown
Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.
—Common Proverb
Genius is sorrow’s child.
—John Adams (1735–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
We meet with few utterly dull and stupid souls; the sublime and transcendent are still fewer; the generality of mankind stand between these two extremes; the interval is filled with multitudes of ordinary geniuses, but all very useful, the ornaments and supports of the commonwealth: these produce the agreeable and the profitable, and are conversant in commerce, finances, war, navigation, arts, trades, society, and conversation.
—Jean de La Bruyere (1645–96) French Satiric Moralist, Author
Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with man’s physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed.
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) French Poet, Art Critic, Essayist, Translator
Genius ain’t anything more than elegant common sense.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) (1818–85) American Humorist, Author, Lecturer
Genius is only a superior power of seeing.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
What I do not like about our definitions of genius is that there is in them nothing of the day of judgment, nothing of resounding through eternity and nothing of the footsteps of the Almighty.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
Saying that a great genius is mad, while at the same time recognizing his artistic worth, is like saying that he had rheumatism or suffered from diabetes. Madness, in fact, is a medical term that can claim no more notice from the objective critic than he grants the charge of heresy raised by the theologian, or the charge of immorality raised by the police.
—James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish Novelist, Poet
The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.
—Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist
Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
All the means of action—the shapeless masses—the materials—lie everywhere about us. What we need is the celestial fire to change the flint into the transparent crystal, bright and clear. That fire is genius.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) American Poet, Educator, Academic
Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
—W. H. Auden (1907–73) British-born American Poet, Dramatist
Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
No man ever followed his genius until it misled him.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.
—Anonymous
Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
The real people of genius were resolute workers not idle dreamers.
—George Henry Lewes (1817–78) English Philosopher, Literary Critic, Art Critic
Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason and imagination, rarely or never.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them.
—Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American Inventor, Philosopher
Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
The kind of intelligence a genius has is a different sort of intelligence. The thinking of a genius does not proceed logically. It leaps with great ellipses. It pulls knowledge from God knows where.
—Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American Journalist, Radio Personality
Genius, in one respect, is like gold; numbers of persons are constantly writing about both, who have neither.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
Meditation brings wisdom; lack of meditation leaves ignorance. Know well what leads you forward and what holds you back, and choose the path that leads to wisdom.
—Buddhist Teaching
Every man is a potential genius until he does something.
—Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1852–1917) English Actor, Theater Personality
Since when was genius found respectable?
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–61) English Poet
As it must not, so genius cannot be lawless; for it is even that constitutes its genius—the power of acting creatively under laws of its own origination.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
Genius may be described as the spirit of discovery.—It is the eye of intellect, and the wing of thought.—It is always in advance of its time—the pioneer for the generation which it precedes.
—William Gilmore Simms (1806–70) American Poet, Novelist, Historian
He was a genius – that is to say, a man who does superlatively and without obvious effort something that most people cannot do by the uttermost exertion of their abilities.
—Robertson Davies (1913–95) Canadian Novelist, Playwright, Essayist
I have nothing to declare except my genius.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
I was actually a fruitarian at that point in time. I ate only fruit. Now I’m a garbage can like everyone else. And we were about three months late in filing a fictitious business name so I threatened to call the company Apple Computer unless someone suggested a more interesting name by five o’clock that day. Hoping to stimulate creativity. And it stuck. And that’s why we’re called Apple.
—Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American Entrepreneur, Businessperson
There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him.
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French Actor, Drama Theorist
There is no great genius without some touch of madness.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian