Quotes & Sayings About Genius Mind

The thread that ties us to the center is the hidden cord of the heart, it is the thread of genius that can connect the mind with the heart, that allows the mind to feel and reveals the thought set within the heart. — Michael Meade

If a man will comprehend the richness and variety of the universe, and inspire his mind with a due measure of wonder and awe, he must contemplate the human intellect not only on its heights of genius but in its abysses of ineptitude ... — A.E. Housman

Among the many inconsistencies which folly produces or infirmity suffers in the human mind, there has often been observed a manifest and striking contrariety between the life of an author and his writings ... Those whom the appearance of virtue or the evidence of genius has tempted to a nearer knowledge of the writer, in whose performances they may be found, have indeed had frequent reason to repent their curiosity. — Samuel Johnson

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

After all, what more does a true genius want? The mind itself is the palace where all the real treasures, the works of art, the indulgences exist. — Alex Scarrow

Whether you are a genius or an idiot, a thief or, like me, a Zen priest who has cultivated the mind for 30 years - the mind anyway is subject to conditions. — Zoketsu Norman Fischer

Nothing is so much coveted by a young man as the reputation of being a genius; and many seem to feel that the want of patience for laborious application and deep research is such a mark of genius as cannot be mistaken: while a real genius, like Sir Isaac Newton, with great modesty says, that the great and only difference between his mind and the minds of others consisted solely in his having more patience. — John Todd

Here is the easiest way to explain the genius of Johnny Cash: Singing from the perspective of a convicted muderer in the song "Folsom Prison Blues,: Cash is struck by pangs of regret when he sits in his cell and hears a distant train whistle. This is because people on that train are "probably drinkin' coffee." And this is also why Cash seems completely credible as a felon: He doesn't want freedom or friendship or Jesus or a new lawyer. He wants coffee. Within the mind of a killer, complex feeling are eerily simple. This is why killers can shoot men in Reno just to watch them die, and the rest of us usually can't. — Chuck Klosterman

Nothing any man can do will improve that genius; but the genius needs his mind, and he can broaden that mind, fertilize it with knowledge of all kinds, improve its powers of expression; supply the genius, in short, with an orchestra instead of a tin whistle. All our little great men, our one-poem poets, our one-picture painters, have merely failed to perfect themselves as instruments. The Genius who wrote The Ancient Mariner is no less sublime than he who wrote The Tempest; but Coleridge had some incapacity to catch and express the thoughts of his genius - was ever such wooden stuff as his conscious work? - while Shakespeare had the knack of acquiring the knowledge necessary to the expression of every conceivable harmony, and his technique was sufficiently fluent to transcribe with ease. — Aleister Crowley

This is the highest miracle of genius, that things which are not should be as though they were, that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another. — Thomas B. Macaulay

Madness is just what a genius looks like to a tiny mind. — Steven Moffat

The most genius ideas are in the minds of children and lunatics.
I describe myself as somewhere in between. — Marilyn Manson

This absolute lack of objectivity might be said to resemble nothing so much as the lack of objectivity these same people had shown during Stalin's life, when they had been so supremely worshipful of his mind and strength of will, of his foresight and genius. Their hysterical worship of Stalin and their total and unconditional rejection of him sprang from the same soil. — Vasily Grossman

We've all experienced pondering a problem all day long only to find we receive the solution when forgetting about the problem and thinking of something else. When we stop concentrating so hard, we allow our subconscious to flourish, and those who do this more than others are often called geniuses. — James Morcan

She will try to find the nice way to exercise intelligence. But intelligence is not ladylike. Intelligence is full of excesses. Rigorous intelligene abhors sentimentality, and women must be sentimental to value the dreadful silliness of the men around them. Morbid intelligence abhors the cheery sunlight of positive thinking and eternal sweetness; and women must be sunlight and cheery and sweet, or the woman could not bribe her way with smiles through a day. Wild intelligence abhors any narrow world; and the world of women must stay narrow, or the woman is an outlaw. No woman could be Nietzsche or Rimbaud without ending up in a whorehouse or lobotomized. Any vital intelligence has passionate questions, aggressive answers; but women cannot be explorers; there can be no Lewis or Clark of the female mind. — Andrea Dworkin

Happenstance is the myth of the simple mind, for it is the deliberate genius of God that what appears entirely disjointed always reveals itself to be stunningly seamless. And it is in reflecting on such stunning ingenuity that our faith becomes seamless. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction. — Samuel Johnson

Language gradually varies, and with it fade away the writings of authors who have flourished their allotted time; otherwise, the creative powers of genius would overstock the world, and the mind would be completely bewildered in the endless mazes of literature. — Washington Irving

'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' is, to my mind, a work of perfect genius. — Amity Gaige

I've started to think that maybe I wouldn't mind passing my demented genius on to some small thing who can set fire and breathe profanity. — Marilyn Manson

The real secret behind top athletes' genius, then, may be as esoteric and obvious and dull and profound as silence itself. The real, many-veiled answer to the question of just what goes through a great player's mind as he stands at the center of a hostile crowdnoise and lines up the free-throw that will decide the game might well be: nothing at all. — David Foster Wallace

These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman. — Abigail Adams

In matters of healing the body or the mind, vacation is a true genius! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

The most delicate beauty in the mind of women is, and ever must be, an independence of artificial stimulants for content. It is not so with men. The links that bind men to capitals belong to the golden chain of civilization,
the chain which fastens all our destinies to the throne of Jove. And hence the larger proportion of men in whom genius is pre-eminent have preferred to live in cities, though some of them have bequeathed to us the loveliest pictures of the rural scenes in which they declined to dwell. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Genius does not need to be validated, it just needs a legal pad and a pen. — Tom Althouse

There are probably brilliant people, geniuses, alive today who don't even know how to say, "Hello, how do you do?" because their minds are absorbed with electronic images. — Beth Henley

If there be anything that can be called genius, it consists chiefly in ability to give that attention to a subject which keeps it steadily in the mind, till we have surveyed it accurately on all sides. — Robert Quillen

When the body is assailed by the strong force of time and the limbs weaken from exhausted force, genius breaks down, and mind and speech fail.
[Lat., Ubi jam valideis quassatum est viribus aevi
Corpus, et obtuseis ceciderunt viribus artus,
Claudicat ingenium delirat linguaque mensque.] — Lucretius

Genius has as many components as the mind itself. — Stephen Jay Gould

The first ingredient to being wrong is to claim that you are right. Geniuses have a knack for raising new questions. Hence by the public they are either admired for their creativity or, even more commonly so, detested for disturbing the daily peace of mind. — Criss Jami

Miss Austen's novels ... seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in the wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. The one problem in the mind of the writer ... is marriageableness. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I don't know whether my husband is a genius or not, but he certainly has a dirty mind. — Nora Barnacle

Ebenezar blinked . Then he turned his face to me his expression clearly asking whether or not I was out of my damned mind .

"Wile E. Coyote" I said to him soberly . "Suuuuuuper Genius — Jim Butcher

The love of retirement has in all ages adhered closely to those minds which have been most enlarged by knowledge, or elevated by genius. Those who enjoyed everything generally supposed to confer happiness have been forced to seek it in the shades of privacy. — Samuel Johnson

The genius of man is hidden in the silent, settled state of mind from where every thought emerges. — Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

The mark of genius is an incessant activity of mind. Genius is a spiritual greed. — V.S. Pritchett

When you drop a hammer and a feather together, which one hits the ground first? If you pose this question to the general public, the most expected answer is based on common sense, that the heavier objects fall faster to the ground. David Scott, the seventh man to set foot on the moon during the Apollo 15 mission, carried out this simple experiment. dropped a hammer and a feather together He onto the moon's surface and expectedly they fell on the ground together. This demonstrated Galileo's genius and corrected the general misconception that heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones because they have more affinity towards the Earth Even Aristotle was proved wrong. It becomes obvious that with bit of curiosity and application of mind and intuitiveness, one can understand the laws of nature better. — Sharad Nalawade

Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say, 'How did he do it? He must be a genius! — Gian-Carlo Rota

James's critical genius comes out most tellingly in his mastery over, his baffling escape from, Ideas; a mastery and an escape which are perhaps the last test of a superior intelligence. He had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it. [ ... ] In England, ideas run wild and pasture on the emotions; instead of thinking with our feelings (a very different thing) we corrupt our feelings with ideas; we produce the public, the political, the emotional idea, evading sensation and thought. [ ... ] James in his novels is like the best French critics in maintaining a point of view, a view-point untouched by the parasite idea. He is the most intelligent man of his generation.
(Little Review, 1918) — T. S. Eliot

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him ... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create
so that
without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating. — Pearl S. Buck

When the creations of a genius collide with the mind of a layman, and produce an empty sound, there is little doubt as to which is at fault. — Salvador Dali

There are subjects for which I have more than ordinary affection because they are associated in my mind with kindly and understanding men or
women
sculptors who left even upon such impliant clay as mine the delicate chiseling of refined genius, who gave unwittingly something of their final character to most unpromising material. — Loren Eiseley

Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such,
We scarcely can praise it or blame it too much;
Who, born for the Universe, narrowed his mind,
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind. — Samuel Johnson

You don't have to be a genius to find the hidden potential deep in your mind. — Ray Davies

Intelligence entails a strong mind, but genius entails a heart of a lion in tune with a strong mind. — Criss Jami

If goodness were only a theory, it were a pity it should be lost to the world. There are a number of things, the idea of which is a clear gain to the mind. Let people, for instance, rail at friendship, genius, freedom, as long as they will -the very names of these despised qualities are better than anything else that could be substituted for them, and embalm even the most envenomed satire against them. — William Hazlitt

Usually, I think it's best to play the song for them once and have them mix it up on the spot, because when the logical mind gets too involved, I think it kills a lot of magic. I just think the subconscious mind is so much smarter, and unfortunately, people do not trust their subconscious. A lot of people just don't access to all of that, the secret genius that's inside of them. And it's so much easier to get it out of a musician if you don't give them a chance to overthink. — Larkin Grimm

To appreciate and use correctly a valuable maxim requires a genius; a vital appropriating exercise of mind closely allied to that which first created it. — William R. Alger

But his own mind was helpless against every moment's headline. He did nothing but leap into the mass of changes and explore them and all the tiny facets so eventually he was completely governed by fears of certainty. He distrusted it in anyone but Nora for there it went to the spine, and yet he attacked it again and again in her, cruelly, hating it, the sure lanes of the probable. Breaking chairs and window glass doors in fury at her certain answers. [15-16] — Michael Ondaatje

[Rousseau is] the person whom I most revere both for the Force of [his] Genius and the Greatness of [his] mind [ ... ] — David Hume

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

Those whom nature destined to make her disciples have no need of teachers. Bacon, Descartes, Newton - these tutors of the human race had no need of tutors themselves, and what guides could have led them to those places where their vast genius carried them? Ordinary teachers could only have limited their understanding by confining it to their own narrow capabilities. With the first obstacles, they learned to exert themselves and made the effort to traverse the immense space they moved through. If it is necessary to permit some men to devote themselves to the study of the sciences and the arts, that should be only for those who feel in themselves the power to walk alone in those men's footsteps and to move beyond them. It is the task of this small number of people to raise monuments to the glory of the human mind. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I don't want to be a genius or a freak or something on display. I wish for empathy and compassion from those around me, and I appreciate sincerity, clarity, and logicality in other people. I believe most people - autistic or not - share this wish. And now, with my newfound insight, I'm on the way to achieving that goal. I hope you'll keep those thoughts in mind the next time you meet someone who looks or acts a little strange. — John Elder Robison

The mind is the laboratory where products, both fake and genuine are manufactured. People grow wild weeds, others grow flourishing flowers! — Israelmore Ayivor

There is nothing so remote from vanity as true genius. It is almost as natural for those who are endowed with the highest powers of the human mind to produce the miracles of art, as for other men to breathe or move. Correggio, who is said to have produced some of his divinest works almost without having seen a picture, probably did not know that he had done anything extraordinary. — William Hazlitt

James was sixteen, Cam seventeen, perhaps. She had looked round for someone who was not there, for Mrs. Ramsay, presumably. But there was only kind Mrs. Beckwith turning over her sketches under the lamp. Then, being tired, her mind still rising and falling with the sea, the taste and smell that places have after long absence possessing her, the candles wavering in her eyes, she had lost herself and gone under. It was a wonderful night, starlit; the waves sounded as they went upstairs; the moon surprised them, enormous, pale, as they passed the staircase window. She had slept at once. — Virginia Woolf

Men give me credit for some genius. All the genius I have lies in this; when I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort that I have made is what people are pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought. — Alexander Hamilton

The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and of generosity. What one of us but can call to mind some relative more promising in youth than all his fellows, who has fallen a sacrifice to his rapacity? — Abraham Lincoln

To all of which is added a selection from the elementary schools of subjects of the most promising genius, whose parents are too poor to give them further education, to be carried at the public expense through the college and university. The object is to bring into action that mass of talents which lies buried in poverty in every country, for want of the means of development, and thus give activity to a mass of mind, which, in proportion to our population, shall be double or treble of what it is in most countries. — Thomas Jefferson

You would think with all the genius and the brilliance of these times, we might find a higher purpose and a better use of mind. — Jackson Browne

We are all 'GENIUS in PROGRESS' ...walking towards achieving our highest potential..and thus attaining the status..Do you believe you could be a Genius..Well it's all in the mind !! — Abha Maryada Banerjee

Health, wealth, beauty, and genius are not created; they are only manifested by the arrangement of your mind-that is, by your concept of yourself, and your concept of yourself is all that you accept and consent to as true. — Neville Goddard

The finest piece of mechanism in all the universe is the brain of man. The wise person develops his brain, and opens his mind to the genius and spirit of the world's great ideas. He will feel inspired with the purest and noblest thoughts that have ever animated the spirit of humanity. — Alfred Armand Montapert

The reason why a work of genius is not easily admired from the first is that the man who has created it is extraordinary, that few other men resemble him. It is his work itself that, by fertilising the rare minds capable of understanding it, will make them increase and multiply. — Marcel Proust

The practical common-sense of modern society, the utilitarian direction which labor, laws, opinion, religion, take, is the natural genius of the British mind. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Genius: Range of mind, power of imagination, and responsiveness of soul: this is genius. The man of genius has a soul with greater range, can therefore be struck by the feelings of all beings, is concerned with everything in nature, and never receives an idea that does not evoke a feeling. Everything stirs him and everything is retained within him.
When the soul has been moved by an object itself, it is even more affected by the memory of the object. But in a man of genius imagination goes further: it recalls ideas with a more vivid feeling than it received them, because to these ideas are connected a thousand others more appropriate to arouse the feeling. — Jean-Francois De Saint-Lambert

Luckily for us, now that steam has narrowed the Atlantic to a strait, the nervous, rocky West is intruding a new and continental element into the national mind, as we shall yet have an American genius. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius should be privileged to utter sedition, to blaspheme, to outrage good taste, to corrupt the youthful mind, and generally to scandalize one's uncles. — George Bernard Shaw

This surface good-nature which captivates a new acquaintance and is no bar to treachery, which knows no scruple and is never at fault for an excuse, which makes an outcry at the wound which it condones, is one of the most distinctive features of the journalist. This camaraderie (the word is a stroke of genius) corrodes the noblest minds; it eats into their pride like rust, kills the germ of great deeds, and lends a sanction to moral cowardice. — Honore De Balzac

The capacity of the female mind for studies of the highest order cannot be doubted, having been sufficiently illustrated by its works of genius, of erudition, and of science. — James Madison

Art has a double visage: it looks before and after. Romance is its forward-looking face. The germ of growth is in romanticism. Formalism, on the other hand, consolidates tradition; gleans what has been gained and makes it facile to the hand or the mind; economizes the energy of genius. — George Edward Woodberry

Any sensible ruler would have killed off Leonard, and Lord Vetinari was extremely sensible and often wondered why he had not done so. He'd decided that it was because, imprisoned in the priceless, inquiring amber of Leonard's massive mind, underneath that bright investigative genius was a kind of willful innocence that might in lesser men be called stupidity. It was the seat and soul of that force which, down the millennia, had caused mankind to stick its fingers in the electric light socket of the Universe and play with the switch to see what happened - and then be very surprised when it did. — Terry Pratchett

Some superior minds are unrecognized because there is no standard by which to weigh them. — Joseph Joubert

Genghis Khan's ability to manipulate people and technology represented the experienced knowledge of more than four decades of nearly constant warfare. At no single, crucial moment in his life did he suddenly acquire his genius at warfare, his ability to inspire the loyalty of his followers, or his unprecedented skill for organizing on a global scale. These derived not from epiphanic enlightenment or formal schooling but from a persistent cycle of pragmatic learning, experimental adaptation, and constant revision driven by his uniquely disciplined mind and focused will. His fighting career began long before most of his warriors at Bukhara had been born, and in every battle he learned something new. In every skirmish, he acquired more followers and additional fighting techniques. In each struggle, he combined the new ideas into a constantly changing set of military tactics, strategies, and weapons. He never fought the same war twice. — Jack Weatherford

People who sleep only two or three hours in the twenty-four are always geniuses. The ones you hear about, anyway. Never mind if the ones you don't hear about are dolts. Insomnia is genius. It must be. Think of all the work you could do the thoughts you could think, the books you could read, the love you could make, while the dull clods lie snoring. — Ursula K. Le Guin

The Didots created happiness and power, or in this case, pain and sadness ... but only within its subject's mind.
The power it held was real, but it was not a physical power. It was the power of persuasion, the power of illusion.
Mr. Bradshaw was a genius. — Embee

They also bring to mind what sometimes seems to be a rapt predilection of small but influential cults of intellectuals or esthetes for what is generally regarded as perverse dispirited or distastefully unintelligible. The award of a Nobel Prize in literature to Andre Gide who in his work fervently and openly insists that pederasty is the superior and preferable way of life for adolescent boys furnishes a memorable example of such judgments. Renowned critics and some professors in our best universities reverently acclaim as the superlative expression of genius James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake a 628page collection of erudite gibberish indistinguishable to most people from the familiar word salad produced by hebephrenic patients on the back wards of any state hospital. — Hervey M. Cleckley

And if the prodigious genius of Azarya Sheiner has never found the solution, then perhaps that is proof that no solution exists, that the most gifted among us is feeble in mind against the brutality of incomprehensibility that assutalts us from all sides. And so we try, as best we cn, to do justice to the tremendousness of our improbable existence. And so we live, as best we can, for ourselves, or who will live for us? And we live, as best we can, for others, otherwise what are we? — Rebecca Goldstein

When Clive stood from the piano and shuffled to the doorway to turn out the studio lights, and looked back at the rich, beautiful chaos that surrounded his toils, and had once more a passing thought, the minuscule fragment of a suspicion that he would not have shared with a single person in the world, would not have even have committed to his journal and whose key word he shaped in his mind only with reluctance ; the thought was, quite simply, that it might be going too far to say that he was ... a genius. A genius. Though he sounded it guiltily on his inner ear, he would not let the word reach his lips. — Ian McEwan

Voltaire made up his mind to destroy the superstition of his time. He fought with every weapon that genius could devise or use. He was the greatest of all caricaturists, and he used this wonderful gift without mercy. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Inside the mind of 'America's Mad Genius' is not necessarily a place you want to visit. — Mike Caro

The mind of man is more intuitive than logical, and comprehends more than it can coordinate. — Luc De Clapiers

With the confidence and peace of mind native to true genius, I lay my life story before the world, so that the reader may learn how to educate himself to be a great tomcat, may recognize the full extent of my excellence, may love, value, honour and admire me- and worship me a little.
Should anyone be audacious enough to think of casting doubt on the sterling worth of this remarkable book, let him reflect that he is dealing with a tomcat possessed of intellect, understanding, and sharp claws. — E.T.A. Hoffmann

The man who labors to please his neighbor for his good to edification has the mind that was in Christ. It is a sinner trying to help a sinner. Even a feeble, but kind and tender man, will effect more than a genius, who is rough and artificial. — Richard Cecil

If for instance the sentiment possessing for the moment the empire of our mind is sorrow, will not the genius sharpen the sorrow and the sorrow purify the genius? Together, will they not be like a cut diamond for which language is only the wax on which they stamp their imprint? I believe that genius, thus awakened, has no need to seek out details, that it scarcely pauses to reflect, that it never thinks of unity: I believe that the details come naturally without search by the poet, that inspiration takes the place of reflection and as for unity, I think there is no unity so perfect as that which results from a heart filled with a single idea ... The nature of genius is related to that of instinct; it's operation is both simple and marvelous. — Charlotte Bronte

Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute! Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Only engage, and then the mind grows heated. Begin, and then the work will be completed. — Jean Anouilh

It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed man
that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value. — Oscar Wilde

Skill is in your mind.
Talent is in your heart.
Genius is in your soul. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Oh, wondrous power! how little understood, Entrusted to the mother's mind alone, To fashion genius, form the soul for good, Inspire a West, or train a Washington. — Sarah Josepha Hale

Intelligence is not limited to neural networks, Merrill. Indeed, half of human intelligence resides in our bodies outside our skulls ... The genius of the irrational ... This is the body's intelligence, not the mind's. Every living cell possess it ... [the] indomitable will to survive. — David Marusek

I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing; that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;-and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost: Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly, I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me. — Laurence Sterne

Like most geniuses, the Countess was a very limited person. Sigmund Freud was so ignorant of the art that Surrealist painters had to explain then- use of Freudian symbols over and over again, and he still didn't get it. Einstein never could remember to take the biscuits out of oven. Those same forces that drive a genius to create things or ideas that entertain or enlighten us often gobble so much of his personality that he has none left for the social graces (Should you invite Van Gogh to your home he might stand on your sofa in his muddy boots and pee where he pleased), and the very act of creation requires such focused concentration that vast areas of knowledge may be completely overlooked. Well, so what? There is no evidence that generalized skills are in any way superior to specialized brilliance, and certainly that sputter less little candle. Same of the mediocre mind known as "common sense" has never produced anything worth celebrating. — Tom Robbins

Is it not indeed, possible that, while a high order of genius is necessarily ambitious, the highest is above that which is termed ambition? And may it not thus happen that many far greater than Milton have contentedly remained "mute and inglorious"? I believe that the world has never seen - and that, unless through some series of accidents goading the noblest order of mind into distateful exertion, the world will never see - that full extent of triumphant execution, in the richer domains of art, of which the human nature is absolutely capable. — Edgar Allan Poe

The valuable library of Alexandria was pillaged or destroyed; and near twenty years afterwards, the appearance of the empty shelves excited the regret and indignation of every spectator whose mind was not totally darkened by religious prejudice. The compositions of ancient genius, so many of which have irretrievably perished, might surely have been excepted from the wreck of idolatry, for the amusement and instruction of succeeding ages. — Edward Gibbon

The first impression of the writings of Mr. J. J. Rousseau received by a knowledgeable reader, who is reading for something more than vanity or to kill time, is that he is encountering a lucidity of mind, a noble impulse of genius and a sensitive soul of such a high level that perhaps never an author of whatever epoch or of whatever people has been able to possess in combination.
The impression that immediately follows is bewilderment over the strange and contradictory opinions, which so oppose those which are in general circulation that one can easily come to the suspicion that the author, by virtue of his extraordinary talent, wishes to show off only the force of his bewitching wit and through the magic of rhetoric make himself something apart who through captivating novelties stands out among all rivals at wit. — Immanuel Kant

Our lives are also measured in three dimensions: Spirit, mind, and body. However, the greatest of these is Spirit, because to refuse the Spirit is to choose death. "For example, the body of a man may be shackled and jailed. Still, his Spirit praises God continuously. Another one may be materially rich and free, but his oppressed Spirit curses his miserable existence. A child's mind may be humble, but glorious in love and faith, while a genius may be too proud to appreciate the humility and simplicity that fruitful faith requires. And regarding the body, even beautiful people are oftentimes unhappy and unfulfilled. It is the Spirit of Love that fulfills us. — Kenneth E. Nowell

When you are awake, your mind is limited. When you are dreaming, your mind is unlimited. Creation is a genius. The mind is a powerful aspect to reality, but no one can truly tell you what reality is, or how reality should be. You can only tell yourself. However, what if you can tap into your mental functions, and truly blur the line to the point, that whether you are awake or asleep, your mind makes the world real? What's the difference between bending the world in your dream, and bending the world in reality? The truth is, there is no difference, when you live in imagination. — Lionel Suggs

Great genius you already have. The super conscious mind is invariably triggered by definition, and by decisiveness. — Brian Tracy

The cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy. It is the only dictator that free man acknowledges. It is the only security that free man desires. — Mirabeau B. Lamar

Great minds tend toward banality. It is the noblest effort of individualism. But it implies a sort of modesty, which is so rare that it is scarcely found except in the greatest, or in beggars. — Andre Gide