Genius Quotes - Page 23

• when you think you've got hold of a genius ... you can't be sure whether it's a spark of the divine fire or a mere flash in the pan.

  May Sinclair

  Thinking, Fire, Sparks

  4 Copy quote

• From numberless books the fluttering reader, idle and inconstant, bears away the bloom that only clings to the outer leaf; but genius has its nectaries, delicate glands, and secrecies of sweetness, and upon these the thoughtful mind must settle in its labor, before the choice perfume of fancy and wisdom is drawn forth.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Reading, Book, Thoughtful

  Robert Aris Willmott (1907). “Pleasures of Literature”

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Neither birth nor sex forms a limit to genius.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Sex, Limits, Birth

  4 Copy quote

• I should say tact was worth much more than wealth as a road to leadership.... I mean that subtle apprehension which teaches a person how to do and say the right thing at the right time. It coexists with very ordinary qualities, and yet many great geniuses are without it. Of all human qualities I consider it the most convenient--not always the highest; yet I would rather have it than many more shining qualities.

  M. E. W. Sherwood

  Leadership, Mean, Shining

  7 Copy quote

• Realism to be effective must be a matter of selection.genius chooses its materials with a view to their beauty and effectiveness; mere talent copies what it thinks is nature, only to find it has been deceived by the external grossness of things.

  Julia Marlowe

  Reality, Thinking, Views

  4 Copy quote

• My genius from a boy
  Has fluttered like a bird within my heart;
  But could not thus confined her power employ,
  Impatient to depart.

  George Moses Horton

  Heart, Boys, Bird

  George Moses Horton (1997). “The Black Bard of North Carolina: George Moses Horton and His Poetry”, p.121, Univ of North Carolina Press

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think the combination of genius and celebrity, in the case of Bobby Fischer, was a dangerous cocktail.

  Liz Garbus

  Thinking, Cocktails, Fischer

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• ... it is not the color of the skin that makes the man or the woman, but the principle formed in the soul. Brilliant wit will shine, come from whence it will; and genius and talent will not hide the brightness of its lustre.

  Maria W. Stewart

  Men, Race, Color

  Maria W. Stewart, Marilyn Richardson (1987). “Maria W. Stewart, America's First Black Woman Political Writer: Essays and Speeches”, p.70, Indiana University Press

  84 Copy quote

  Show source

• ... men of highest genius have been too frequently of extremely shaky morals.

  Tennessee Celeste Claflin

  Men, Morality, Has Beens

  4 Copy quote

• The essence of modernity is that progress no longer waits on genius; instead we have learned to put our faith in the organized efforts of ordinary men. Science is as old as the race, but the effective organization of science is new. Ancient science, like placer mining, was a pursuit of solitary prospectors. Nuggets of truth were found, but the total wealth of knowledge increased slowly. Modern man began to transform this world when he began to mine the hidden veins of knowledge systematically.

  William Wickenden

  Faith, Men, Essence

  4 Copy quote

• Luck is a tag given by the mediocre to account for the accomplishments of genius.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Accomplishment, Luck, Tag

  Robert A. Heinlein (2009). “The Puppet Masters”, p.264, Baen Publishing Enterprises

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Against attempts on my life, I trust in my luck, my good genius, and my guards.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Luck

  9 Copy quote

• Men of genius are like eagles, they live on what they kill, while men of talents are like crows, they live on what has been killed for them.

  Josh Billings

  Men, Eagles, Crow

  6 Copy quote

• If a man can have only one kind of sense, let him have common sense. If he has that and uncommon sense too, he is not far from genius.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Men, Common Sense, Kind

  Henry Ward Beecher, William Drysdale (1887). “Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Never mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat: up again, old heart!-it seems to say,-there is victory yet for all justice; and the true romance which the world exists to realize, will be the transformation of genius into practical power.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Heart, Justice, Romance

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.245, Harvard University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Plot involves fragmentary reality, and it might involve composite reality. Fragmentary reality is the view of the individual. Composite reality is the community or state view. Fragmentary reality is always set against composite reality. Virginia Woolf did this by creating fragmentary monologues and for a while this was all the rage in literature. She was a genius. In the hands of the merely talented it came off like gibberish.

  Rita Mae Brown

  Reality, Creating, Views

  Rita Mae Brown (2011). “Starting from Scratch: A Different Kind of Writers' Manual”, p.82, Bantam

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's no good starting out by thinking one is a heaven-born genius- some people are, but very few. No, one is a tradesman - a tradesman in a good honest trade. You must learn the technical skills, and then, within that trade, you can apply your own creative ideas, but you must submit them to the discipline of form.

  Agatha Christie

  Thinking, Skills, Ideas

  Agatha Christie (1991). “Agatha Christie: An Autobiography”, Berkley Publishing Group

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've seen high and lows. When things go well that doesn't make me feel like some genius. Nor will I allow the next disappointment to make me feel like a complete failure.

  Ben Affleck

  Disappointment, Next, Lows

  4 Copy quote

• Preparation is - if not the key to genius - then at least the key to sounding like a genius.

  Winston Churchill

  Keys, Preparation, Ifs

  6 Copy quote

• We don't train executives, we find them. If a mountain stands up like Everest, you don't have to be a genius to figure out that it's a high mountain.

  Charlie Munger

  Mountain, Figures, Everest

  12 Copy quote

• When I had to fill in my immigration papers, I gave my age as 19, and my profession as genius; I added that I had nothing to declare except my talent.

  Oscar Wilde

  Age, Immigration, Paper

  8 Copy quote

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is the only musician who had as much knowledge asgenius, and as much genius as knowledge.

  Gioachino Rossini

  Musician, Amadeus

  23 Copy quote

• Mandelstam was an artistic genius, the sort that any century produces only a handful of.

  Christian Wiman

  Artistic, Century, Produce

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nabokov quote: "I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child."

  Nick Laird

  Children, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I believe there is some kind of magic that comes just from looking at somebody. In the beginning, I called it "Genius" in a very cynical way. Then I started to look at real geniuses in history and all of them have the same expression, of something very bitter. It's bitter because they have this kind of knowledge that they cannot share. They don't have the time or energy to deal with other people.

  Nir Hod

  Real, Believe, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source