Genius Talent Quotes & Sayings

When a man devotes himself body and spirit to a single object, if he has training and aptitude, no matter how mediocre he may be in ordinary affairs, he will produce something so nearly akin to a work of genius as to deceive half the judges who think themselves competent to decide between genius and talent.
("The Phantom Model") — Hume Nisbet

Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself. — Jean De La Bruyere

Talent produces good work;
genius produces great work. — Matshona Dhliwayo

A genius of comedy His talent brought joy and Laughter to all the world. — Oliver Hardy

Similarly the call to growth can be conceptualized as personal (a daimon or genius, an angel or a muse) or as impersonal, like the tides or the transiting of Venus. Either way works, as long as we're comfortable with it. Or if extra-dimensionality doesn't sit well with you in any form, think of it as "talent," programmed into our genes by evolution. The point, for the thesis I'm seeking to put forward, is that there are forces we can call our allies. As Resistance works to keep us from becoming who we were born to be, equal and opposite powers are counterpoised against it. These are our allies and angels. — Steven Pressfield

Talent may frolic and juggle; genius realizes and adds. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is not perhaps a question of truthfulness; it is rather a natural incapacity to think for herself, to take cognizance of herself in her own brain, and not in the eyes and in the lips of others; even when the ingenuously write into little secret diaries, women think of the unknown god reading
perhaps
over their shoulders. With a similar nature, a woman, to be placed in the first ranks of men, would require even higher genius than that of the highest man; that is why, if the conspicuous works of men themselves, the finest works of women are always inferior to the worth of the women who produced them. — Remy De Gourmont

Would you like to know the great drama of my life? It is that I have put my genius into my life ... I have put only my talent into my works. — Oscar Wilde

An average person with average talent, ambition and education can outstrip the most brilliant genius in our society, if that person has clear, focused goals. — Brian Tracy

The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Pseudo-artists think that being an artist means opposing whatever seems to be an establishment. That is not creative at all. True creativity is the ability to gain perspective wherever you may have missed it before. — Criss Jami

Perseverance is the bridge between talent and genius. — Matshona Dhliwayo

The most exciting thing about women's liberation is that this century will be able to take advantage of talent and potential genius that have been wasted because of taboos. — Helen Reddy

Talent is able to achieve what is beyond other people's capacity to achieve, yet not what is beyond their capacity of apprehension; therefore it at once finds its appreciators. The achievement of genius, on the other hand, transcends not only others' capacity of achievement, but also their capacity of apprehension; therefore they do not become immediately aware of it. Talent is like the marksman who hits a target which others cannot reach; genius is like the marksman who hits a target, as far as which others cannot even see. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Talent only gives an imperfect image--the broken glimmer of a countenance. But the features of Genius remain unruffled. — Robert Eldridge Aris Willmott

The insincerity of man-all men are liars, partial or hiders of facts, half tellers of truths, shirks, moral sneaks. When a merely honest man appears he is a comet-his fame is eternal-needs no genius, no talent-mere honesty — Mark Twain

Genius is talent exercised with courage. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

It might be said of Miss [Djuna] Barnes," [T.S. Eliot] wrote, "who is incontestably one of the most original writers of our time, that never has so much genius been combined with so little talent. — Ross Wetzsteon

It takes people a long time to learn the difference between talent and genius, especially ambitious young men and women. — Louisa May Alcott

Talent seeps out of a man;
genius bursts out of him. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Talent should minister to genius. — Robert Browning

Talent is a faculty that is highly developed, but genius commands all the faculties. — Francis Herbert Hedge

Genius must have talent as its complement and implement, just as in like manner imagination must have fancy. In short, the higher intellectual powers can only act through a corresponding energy of the lower. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The night before, I'd gone overboard with my Lila poems, and maybe it's true that I was hoping that in them he'd see the genius of me, the beauty of my words in his hands. — Beth Kephart

There are people who possess not so much genius as a certain talent for perceiving the desires of the century, or even of the decade, before it has done so itself. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Nothing can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrecognized genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are the omnipotent. Calvin Coolidge 30th President — R. Padfield

There are plenty of clever young writers. But there is too much genius, not enough talent. — J.B. Priestley

The most mesmerizing of artists is always like one who was merely drawing in the sand and people came to watch. — Criss Jami

It is the delight of vulgar talent to dazzle and to bind the beholder. But true genius seeks to defend us from itself. True geniuswill not impoverish, but will liberate, and add new sense. If a wise man should appear in our village, he would create, in those who conversed with him, a new consciousness of wealth, by opening their eyes to unobserved advantages; he would establish a sense of immovable equality, calm us with assurances that we could not be cheated; as every one would discern the checks and guarantees of condition. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Genius is what makes us forget the master's talent. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

It was a good pup, was that Andrew Jackson, and would have made a name for hisself if he'd lived, for the stuff was in him, and he had genius - I know it, because he hadn't had no opportunities to speak of, and it don't stand to reason that a dog could make such a fight as he could under them circumstances, if he hadn't no talent. — Mark Twain

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

Genius is the talent for seeing things straight. — Maude Adams

There is hardly a more common error than that of taking the man who has one talent, for a genius. — Arthur Helps

Talent works for money and fame; the motive which moves genius to productivity is, on the other hand, less easy to determine. — Arthur Schopenhauer

I've come to believe that genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us. I didn't want to accept that notion - far from it: my own training in two elite universities taught me that intelligence and talent distributed themselves economically over a bell curve and that human destiny, because of those mathematical, seemingly irrefutable scientific facts, was as rigorously determined as John Calvin contended. — John Taylor Gatto

Genius is immediate, but talent takes time. — Janet Flanner

Talent guided by genius can achieve anything — Jamie Scallion

I know that a lot of our successes came because we had pure intentions and great talent, and we did a lot of things right, but I also believe that attributing our successes solely to our own intelligence, without acknowledging the role of accidental events, diminishes us. We must acknowledge the random events that went our way, because acknowledging our good fortune - and not telling ourselves that everything we did was some stroke of genius - lets us make more realistic assessments and decisions. The existence of luck also reminds us that our activities are less repeatable. Since change is inevitable, the question is: Do you act to stop it and try to protect yourself from it, or do you become the master of change by accepting it and being open to it? My view, of course, is that working with change is what creativity is about. — Ed Catmull

Dali is like a man who hesitates between talent and genius, or, as one might once have said, between vice and virtue. — Andre Breton

[A] writer's most powerful weapon, his true strength, was his intuition, and regardless of whether he had any talent, if the critics combined to discredit an author's nose for things, he would be reduced to a fearful creature who took a mistakenly guarded, absurdly cautious approach to his work, which would end up stifling his latent genius. — Felix J. Palma

To do what others cannot do is talent. To do what talent cannot do is genius. — Henry Wilson Allen

If genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration, then as a culture we tend to lionize the one percent. — Susan Cain

The true danger of romanticism is that the principles through which it rules itself are of such nature that everybody can invoke them to grant themselves the category of artist. Taking the anxiety of an unreachable happiness, the angst of unrealized dreams, the indifference towards action and life, as the defining criteria of genius or talent, immediately facilitates everyone who feels or has felt that same anxiety, suffers that same angst and is prey of that particular indifference, to feel themselves convinced that they themselves are an interesting individuality, and that Destiny, granting them that longing, suffering and dreams, implicitly bestowed on them intellectual greatness. — Fernando Pessoa

True education makes for inequality; the inequality of individuality, the inequality of success, the glorious inequality of talent, of genius. — Felix Schelling

You have a good many little gifts and virtues, but there is no need of parading them, for conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long, and the great charm of all power is modesty. — Louisa May Alcott

Talent is hereditary; it may be the common possession of a whole family (eg, the Bach family); genius is not transmitted; it is never diffused, but is strictly individual. — Otto Weininger

Bend the rules only if you have learned them; break the rules only if you have mastered them. — Matshona Dhliwayo

If talent is a natural aptitude for creation with an outlook on life peculiar to oneself, then genius is to have an outlook on life, peculiar to oneself, which yet appeals to everybody. Talent is for oneself and a few others, but genius is universal. — D.E. Stevenson

The purpose of America is to unleash the full talent and genius of every individual. — Ronald Reagan

The persecution of genius fosters its influence. — Tacitus

Talent is what you possess; genius is what possesses you. — Malcolm Cowley

Talent will take you to the mountaintop. Genius will take you to the edge of the universe. — Matshona Dhliwayo

To carry feelings of childhood into the powers of adulthood, to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which every day for years has rendered familiar, this is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks which distinguish it from talent. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

It's a good thing I'm a professional and could see the pure genius talent behind the raw sexual beauty. — Zach Braff

It is possible that the production of genius is reserved to a limited period of mankind's history. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I put all my talent into my works; I put my genius into my life — Oscar Wilde

I have no talent for making new friends, but oh such genius for fidelity to old ones. — Daphne Du Maurier

It always seems to me that one of the saddest things about the death of a literary man is the fact that the breaking-up of his collection of books almost invariably follows; the building up of a good library, the work of a lifetime, has been so much labour lost, so far as future generations are concerned. Talent, yes, and genius too, are displayed not only in writing books but also in buying them, and it is a pity that the ruthless hammer of the auctioneer should render so much energy and skill fruitless. — Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. — Calvin Coolidge

It is the curse of talent that, although it labors with greater steadiness and perseverance than genius, it does not reach its goal, while genius already on the summit of the ideal, gazes laughingly about. — Robert Schumann

Genius still means to me, in my Russian fastidiousness and pride of phrase, a unique dazzling gift. The gift of James Joyce, and not the talent of Henry James. — Vladimir Nabokov

The problem with Ireland is that it's a country full of genius, but with absolutely no talent. — Hugh Leonard

The silence that, without any deferential air, listens with polite attention, is more flattering than compliments, and more frequently broken for the purpose of encouraging others to speak, than to display the listener's own powers. This is the really eloquent silence. It requires great genius - more perhaps than speaking - and few are gifted with the talent. — Arthur Martine

Our system freed the individual genius of man. Released him to fly as high & as far as his own talent & energy would take him. We allocate resources not by government. decision but by the millions of decisions customers make when they go into the market. place to buy. If something seems too high-priced we buy something else. Thus resources are steered toward those things the people want most at the price they are willing to pay. It may not be a perfect system but it's better than any other that's ever been tried. — Ronald Reagan

Genius is the talent of a person who is dead. — Edmond De Goncourt

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

Common sense is only a modification of talent. Genius is an exaltation of it. The difference is, therefore, in degree, not nature. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

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

In my experience there are few people who are of true genius. There are many who are gifted, but most of the world's work and great things come from ordinary people with a talent which they develop. — James E. Faust

Genius is the gold in the mine, talent is the miner who works and brings it out. — Marguerite Gardiner, Countess Of Blessington

The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief. Talent is mistaken for genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatness, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The moment of recognizing your own lack of talent is a flash of genius. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

When those of Jewish blood exhibit moral or intellectual superiority, genius or special talent, we feel pride in them, even if they have abjured the faith like Spinoza, Marx, Disraeli or Heine. Despite the meditations of pundits or the decrees of council, our own instincts and acts, and those of others, have defined for us the term 'Jew.' — Louis D. Brandeis

Genius gives birth, talent delivers. — Jack Kerouac

Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A talent somewhat above mediocrity, shrewd and not too sensitive, is more likely to rise in the world than genius. — Charles Horton Cooley

A very fine artist can take something quite ordinary and, through sheer artistry and willpower, turn it into a work of art. — Truman Capote

Marriage requires a special talent, like acting. Monogamy requires genius. — Warren Beatty

Longevity is the revenge of talent upon genius. — Cyril Connolly

Talent warms-up the given (as they say in cookery) and makes it apparent; genius brings something new. But our time lets talent pass for genius. They want to abolish the genius, deify the genius, and let talent forge ahead. — Soren Kierkegaard

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

My only genius talent is inquisitiveness. — Albert Einstein

Talent is the infinite capacity for taking pains. Genius is the infinite capacity for achievement without taking any pains at all. — Helene Hanff

I don't have a lot of respect for talent. Talent is genetic. It's what you do with it that counts. — Martin Ritt

Talent is like a marksman who hits a target which others cannot
reach; genius is like a marksman who hits a target which others cannot see. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Inner peace - you need to know who you are, what you want out of life. You have to do your own thinking, and for that you better know who you are, and not just know but be secure in it, comfortable with yourself. Plus you gotta have discipline. Stamina. And luck sure helps. A little luck counts for a lot, including our great good luck of being born into the greatest economic system ever devised. It's not a perfect system by any means, but overall it's responsible for tremendous human progress. In just the past century alone, we've seen something like a seven-to-one improvement in the standard of living. I'm not saying we don't have problems, we've got a helluva lot of problems, but that's where the genius of the free market comes in, all the drive and talent and energy that goes into solving those problems. — Ben Fountain

Talent I say is what an actor needs. And talent is faith in oneself, one's own powers. — Maxim Gorky

Talent imitates, but genius steals. — T. S. Eliot

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works. — Oscar Wilde

Talent is full of thoughts, Genius is thought. Talent is a cistern, Genius a fountain. — Edwin Percy Whipple

When a man has displayed talent in some particular path, and left all competitors behind him in it, the world are too apt to give him credit for universality of genius, and to anticipate for him success in all that he undertakes. — Charles Caleb Colton

Genius is talent set on fire by courage. — Henry Van Dyke

I intend to work for this dance of the future. I do not know whether I have the necessary qualities; I may have neither genius nor talent nor temperament. But I know that I have a Will; and will and energy sometimes prove greater than either genius or talent or temperament. — Isadora Duncan

Talent does whatever it wants to do. Genius does only what it can. — Eugene Delacroix

We're all geniuses. Life is merely overpopulated with singers who play drums, and, drummers who sing, to pay rent. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

If a great mansion is located in a wrong environment, it loses its real value! So it is, when a great and true genius fails to get the right stage, its real value is least seen! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

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

Talent does what it can: Genius does what it must. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Genius is power, talent is applicability. — Ralph Waldo Emerson