Genius Quotes - Page 18

• To use many words to communicate few thoughts is everywhere the unmistakable sign of mediocrity. To gather much thought into few words stamps the man of genius.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Writing, Men, Mediocrity

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2012). “Collected Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer”, p.351, Simon and Schuster

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• To eliminate the discrepancy between men's plans and the results achieved, a new approach is necessary. Morphological thinking suggests that this new approach cannot be realized through increased teaching of specialized knowledge. This morphological analysis suggests that the essential fact has been overlooked that every human is potentially a genius. Education and dissemination of knowledge must assume a form which allows each student to absorb whatever develops his own genius, lest he become frustrated. The same outlook applies to the genius of the peoples as a whole.

  Fritz Zwicky

  Education, Teaching, Knowledge

  Morphological astronomy, The Observatory, Vol. 68, p. 121-143, 1948.

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• We are apt to consider that invention is the result of spontaneous action of some heavenborn genius, whose advent we must patiently wait for, but cannot artificially produce. It is unquestionable, however, that education, legal enactments, and general social conditions have a stupendous influence on the development of the originative faculty present in a nation and determine whether it shall be a fountain of new ideas or become simply a purchaser from others of ready-made inventions.

  John Ambrose Fleming

  Education, Science, Ideas

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• Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Friendship, Inspiration, Solitude

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.83, Harvard University Press

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• A genius knows how to make himself easily understood without being obvious about it.

  Jean Anouilh

  Obvious, Understood, Know How

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• The man who succeeds above his fellows is the one who early in life, clearly discerns his object, and towards that object habitually directs his powers. Even genius itself is but fine observation strengthened by fixity of purpose. Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Success, Men, Purpose

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• People sometimes attribute my success to my genius; all the genius I know anything about is hard work.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Inspirational, Motivation, Hard Work

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  Misfortunes often sharpen the genius.

  Ovid

  Inspirational, Meditation, Misfortunes

  Ovid (2015). “The Art Of Love”, p.30, Ovid

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• Leonardo da Vinci was comfortable being illegitimate, gay, a misfit, a heretic. But he also respected other people. He didn't get into disputations. He was a genius but he had a certain humility. In his notebooks you see lists of people he wanted to grill about things like how the water diversions in Milan work; he was always interested in learning from other people.

  Walter Isaacson

  Notebook, Humility, Gay

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• The principal mark of genius is not perfection, but originality.

  Robert Schumann

  Perfection, Originality, Mark

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• The scorn of genius is the most arrogant and the most boundless of all scorn.

  Ouida

  Arrogant, Scorn, Boundless

  Ouida (2016). “Wisdom, Wit and Pathos of Ouida”, p.317, Ouida

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• And I despise your books, I despise wisdom and the blessings of this world. It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe.

  Anton Chekhov

  Wise, Book, Blessing

  Anton Chekhov (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (Illustrated)”, p.2020, Delphi Classics

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• If what we think of ourselves were true, the planet would overflow with geniuses.

  Dejan Stojanovic

  Thinking, Planets, Overflow

  "The Sun Watches the Sun". Book by Dejan Stojanovic, "A Thought about Ourselves" (p. 122), 1999.

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• Talent has the four seasons: spring, that is to say, the sowing of the seeds; summer, growth; autumn, the harvest; winter, intellectual death. But there is now and then a genius who has no winter, and, no matter how many years he may live, on the blossom of his thought no snow falls. Genius has the climate of perpetual growth.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Summer, Spring, Fall

  Robert Green Ingersoll, Clinton P. Farrell (1900). “The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll: Tributes and miscellany”

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• Genius as an explosive power beats gunpowder hollow; and if knowledge, which should give that power guidance, is wanting, the chances are not small that the rocket will simply run amuck among friends and foes.

  Thomas Huxley

  Running, Knowledge, Giving

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1873). “Critiques and Addresses by Thomas Henry Huxley, LL.D., F.R.S”, p.7

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• A profound dislike for merely absorbing knowledge and a compulsion to learn by doing are among the most reliable signs of genius.

  Sylvia Nasar

  Profound, Compulsion, Absorbing

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• All the genius I have lies in this; when I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly.

  Alexander H. Stephens

  Lying, Hands, Fruit Of Labor

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• Genius is a plodding intellect, incapable of dreaming up the obstacles that stop the rest of us.

  Robert Breault

  Dream, Obstacles, Intellect

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• Many men of genius must arise before a particular man of genius can appear.

  Isaac D'Israeli

  Men, Arise, Particular

  "The Literary Character, Illustrated by the History of Men of Genius". Book by Isaac D'Israeli, 1795-1822.

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• Genius is mainly an affair of energy.

  Matthew Arnold

  Life, Energy, Affair

  Matthew Arnold (1875). “Essays in Criticism”, p.58, London : [s.n.]

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• Genius may be almost defined as the faculty of acquiring poverty.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  May, Poverty, Faculty

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1870). “Essays and Reviews”, p.38

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• Genius, that power which constitutes a poet; that quality without which judgment is cold, and knowledge is inert; that energy which collects, combines, amplifies and animates.

  Samuel Johnson

  Quality, Energy, Amplify

  Samuel Johnson, Peter Cunningham, Thomas Babington Macaulay Baron Macaulay (1861). “Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets”, p.322

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• Nature seems to delight in disappointing the assuduities of art, with which it would rear dulness to maturity, and to glory in the vigor and luxuriance of her chance productions. She scatters the seeds of genius to the winds, and though some may perish among the stony places of the world, and some may be choked by the thorns and brambles of early adversity, yet others will now and then strike root even in the clefts of the rock, struggle bravely up into sunshine, and spread over their sterile birthplace all the beauties of vegetation.

  Washington Irving

  Art, Struggle, Adversity

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• The very greatest genius, after all, is not the greatest thing in the world, any more than the greatest city in the world is the country or the sky. It is the concentration of some of its greatest powers, but it is not the greatest diffusion of its might. It is not the habit of its success, the stability of its sereneness.

  Leigh Hunt

  Country, Cities In The World, Sky

  Leigh Hunt (1852). “Leigh Hunt's Works”, p.16

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• Talent should minister to genius.

  Robert Browning

  Talent, Ministers, Should

  Robert Browning (2008). “The Agamemnon of Aeschylus, La Saisiaz, Etc.”, p.97, Wildside Press LLC

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