Genius Quotes - Page 19

• Constant effort and frequent mistakes are the stepping stones to genius.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  Elbert Hubbard, Fred Bann (1916). “Great scientists”

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• The effusions of genius are entitled to admiration rather than applause, as they are chiefly the effect of natural endowment, and sometimes appear to be almost involuntary.

  William Benton Clulow

  Admiration, Sometimes, Natural

  William Benton Clulow (1843). “Aphorisms and Reflections: A Miscellany of Thought and Opinion”, p.338

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• The continuous capacity of genius to surpass understanding remains a human constant.

  Denis Dutton

  Understanding, Capacity, Constant

  "Of Human Accomplishment". The New Criterion, www.denisdutton.com. February, 2004.

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• The true genius shudders at incompleteness.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Tension, Incompleteness, Genius And Madness

  Edgar Allan Poe (1849). “The Works of Edgar Allan Poe”, p.509

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• Genius is the power of carrying the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Men, Childhood, Feelings

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• There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.

  Aristotle

  Funny, Depression, Creativity

  "The Anatomy of Melancholy". Book by Robert Burton, 1621.

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• It reflects no great honor on a painter to be able to execute only one thing well -- such as a head, an academy figure, or draperies, animals, landscapes, or the like -- in other words, confining himself to some particular object of study. This is so because there is scarcely a person so devoid of genius as to fail of success if he applies himself earnestly to one branch of study and practices it continually.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Animal, Practice, Honor

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• It is harder to see than it is to express. The whole value of art rests in the artist's ability to see well into what is before him. ... The model will serve equally for a Rembrandt drawing or for anybody's magazine cover. A genius is one who can see. The others can often 'draw' remarkably well. ... Those who get their technique first, expecting sight to come to them later, get a technique of a very ready-made order.

  Robert Henri

  Art, Sight, Order

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• Genius is sorrow's child.

  John Adams

  Children, Sorrow

  John Adams, Benjamin Waterhouse (1927). “Statesman and Friend: Correspondence of John Adams with Benjamin Waterhouse, 1784-1822”

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• 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

  Depression, Ideas, Delirium Tremens

  "Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society". Essay by Antonin Artaud, 1947.

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• Genius - to know without having learned; to draw just conclusions from unknown premises; to discern the soul of things.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Soul, Conclusion, Draws

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.1216, Delphi Classics

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• 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

  Business, Men, People

  Robertson Davies (1983). “The Deptford trilogy”, Penguin Mass Market

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• The only difference between a genius and one of common capacity is that the former anticipates and explores what the latter accidentally hits upon; but even the man of genius himself more frequently employs the advantages that chance presents to him.

  Guillaume Thomas Francois Raynal

  Men, Differences, Chance

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• Genius does not need a special language; it uses newly whatever tongue it finds.

  Edmund Clarence Stedman

  Special, Use, Tongue

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• We mustn't forget how quickly the visions of genius become the canned goods of intellectuals.

  Saul Bellow

  Vision, Forget, Goods

  Saul Bellow (2010). “Saul Bellow: Letters”, p.15, Penguin

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• To complicate things in new ways, that is really very easy; but to see things in new ways, that is difficult and that is why genius is so rare.

  Gertrude Stein

  Way, Easy, Difficult

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• Those same forces that drive a genius to create the things or ideas that entertain or enlighten us often gobble so much of his personality that he has none left for the social graces.

  Tom Robbins

  Ideas, Personality, Grace

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”, p.137, Bantam

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• The deserving are not always blest. That peculiar attribute known as personality is as potent a factor as genius.

  Walter J. Phillips

  Personality, Peculiar, Attributes

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• The highest genius never flowers in satire, but culminates in sympathy with that which is best in human nature, and appeals to it.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Flower, Human Nature, Satire

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• One genius has made many clever artists.

  Martial

  Clever, Artist, Made

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• Men of the greatest genius are not always the most prodigal of their encomiums. But then it is when their range of power is confined, and they have in fact little perception, except of their own particular kind of excellence.

  William Hazlitt

  Men, Perception, Excellence

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1465, Delphi Classics

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• Genius is lonely without the surrounding presence of a people to inspire it.

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Lonely, People, Inspire

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1871). “Atlantic Essays”, p.18

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• Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Literature, Nodding, Moderation

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• Genius can do much, but even genius falls short of the actuality of a single human life.

  Hamilton Wright Mabie

  Fall, Human Life, Humans

  Hamilton Wright Mabie (1900). “My Study Fire: First Series”

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• Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Exercise, Intellectual Curiosity, Vigorous

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.45, Simon and Schuster

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