Is Genius Quotes & Sayings

Buffon said unreservedly, "Genius is simply patience carried to the extreme." To those who asked how he achieved fame he replied: "By spending forty years of my life bent over my writing desk." — Santiago Ramon Y Cajal

This love of money is the curse of American, and for the sake of it men will sell honor and honesty, till we don't know whom to trust, and it is only a genius like Agassiz who dares to say, 'I cannot waste my time in getting rich,' said Mrs. Jessie sadly. — Louisa May Alcott

I have often noticed that the need for cash and the production of a masterpiece just don't coincide with me. Money will hit me at a big off-period and genius will hit me in starvation, that is, I often get the money when I don't think I deserve it and have been lolling around for days and days thinking the most abysmal thoughts. — Bessie Head

Beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average
but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world — Charles Bukowski

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

Genius is to other gifts what the carbuncle is to the precious stones. It sends forth its own light, whereas other stones only reflect borrowed light. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Genius is independent of situation. — Charles Churchill

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

I buy everything India Arie, just because she's such a positive person, and I just love her music. Her music's so soulful ... I think Kanye West is a genius musically. — Tika Sumpter

Geniuses are always marginalized to one degree or another. Someone wholly invested in the status quo is unlikely to disrupt it. — Eric Weiner

I am not some frill-wearing tramp. I am a genius. I say this because it is a fact. I am smarter than any person you've ever met, except perhaps my twin. My heart does not make my brain a fool. — Pierce Brown

In the last analysis, the artist may shout from all the rooftops that he is a genius; he will have to wait for the verdict of posterity. — Marcel Duchamp

Every child is in a way a genius; and every genius is in a way a child. — Arthur Schopenhauer

To copy Nature? A boy with a camera can do that. To get the spirit of Nature? A woodman or a shepherd can follow the trail of the whistling wind to hoarded sunshine in distant wolds. But to interpret Nature and inform it with a human personality that rises above it, invokes the divine in it, is the work of genius. — Ameen Rihani

The genius of America may be that it has built "the fall of Rome" into its very makeup: it is very consciously a constant work in progress, designed to accommodate and build on revolutionary change. — Cullen Murphy

The slightest force, when it is applied to assist and guide the natural descent of its object, operates with irresistible weight; and Jovian had the good fortune to embrace the religious opinions which were supported by the spirit of the times and the zeal and numbers of the most powerful sect. Under his reign, Christianity obtained an easy and lasting victory; and, as soon as the smile of royal patronage was withdrawn, the genius of Paganism, which had been fondly raised and cherished by the arts of Julian, sunk irrecoverably in the dust. — Edward Gibbon

Genius is the act of solving a problem in a way no one has solved it before. — Seth Godin

There is a certain race of men that either imagine it their duty, or make it their amusement, to hinder the reception of every work of learning or genius, who stand as sentinels in the avenues of fame, and value themselves upon giving Ignorance and Envy the first notice of a prey. — Samuel Johnson

Jennifer Aniston is a genius. — Emma Roberts

T Bone is genius. The way they've recorded my voice and the instrumentation to these songs is really quite extraordinary. — Betty Buckley

The endless legacy of the past to the present is the secret source of human genius. — Honore De Balzac

A worker without genius is better than a genius who won't work. — Leopold Auer

The genius of Man in our time has gone into jet-propulsion, atom-splitting, penicillin-curing, etc. There is none over for works of imagination; of spiritual insight or mystical enlightenment. I asked for bread and was given a tranquilliser. — Malcolm Muggeridge

The worship of God is, Honouring his gifts in other men each according to his genius, and loving the greatest men best; those who envy or calumniate great men hate God, for there is no other God. — William Blake

The discovery of truth, by slow progressive meditation, is wisdom.
Intuition of truth, not preceded by perceptible meditation, is genius. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

The man of genius possesses, like everything else, the complete female in himself; but woman herself is only a part of the Universe, and the part can never be the whole; femaleness can never include genius. This lack of genius on the part of woman is inevitable because woman is not a monad, and cannot reflect the Universe. — Otto Weininger

Every true poet, I thought, must be original and originality a condition of poetic genius; so that each poet is like a species in nature (not an individuum genericum or specificum ) and can never recur. That nothing shd. be old or borrowed however cannot be. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

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

It is certainly true that most men need some kind of a God. A few, and they are the men of genius, do not bow to an alien law. The rest try to justify their doings and misdoings, their thinking and existence (at least the menial side of it), to some one else, whether it be the personal God of the Jews, or a beloved, respected, and revered human being. It is only in this way that they can bring their lives under the social law ... — Otto Weininger

A man who fears ridicule will never go far, for good or ill: he remains on this side of this talents, and even if he has genius, he is doomed to mediocrity. — Emile M. Cioran

It is hard to overstate the debt that we owe to men and women of genius. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Much as my Boomer friends will hate me for saying this, Kanye West is the New Dylan. Not only do Kanye's best lyrics match Dylan's prescience, highly inventive word-play and genius for storytelling, his indefatigable cockiness eerily channels Muhammad Ali. — Dan Hill

A sense of timing is the mark of a genius. — Jenny Holzer

I think some of my darkness comes from my dad. There is definitely convict history on that side of the family, a lot of dodginess. But with the darkness can also come entrepreneurialism, genius traits. — Rebel Wilson

The genius of the tradition as it has developed in America is the unique combination of giving and voluntary service in behalf of independent organizations and institutions devoted to the public interest. — Robert L. Payton

I picture the vast realm of the sciences as an immense landscape scattered with patches of dark and light. The goal towards which we must work is either to extend the boundaries of the patches of light, or to increase their number. One of these tasks falls to the creative genius; the other requires a sort of sagacity combined with perfectionism. — Denis Diderot

What do you think is my favourite book? Just now, I mean; I change every three days. "Wuthering Heights." Emily Bronte was quite young when she wrote it, and had never been outside of Haworth churchyard. She had never known any men in her life; how could she imagine a man like Heathcliff?
I couldn't do it, and I'm quite young and never outside the John Grier Asylum - I've had every chance in the world. Sometimes a dreadful fear comes over me that I'm not a genius. Will you be awfully disappointed, Daddy, if I don't turn out to be a great author? — Jean Webster

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

The religionists are the enemies of liberty, and the friends of liberty attack religion; the high-minded and the noble advocate bondage, and the meanest and most servile preach independence; honest and enlightened citizens are opposed to all progress, whilst men without patriotism and without principle put themselves forward as the apostles of civilization and intelligence. Has such been the fate of the centuries which have preceded our own? and has man always inhabited a world like the present, where all things are out of their natural connections, where virtue is without genius, and genius without honor; where the love of order is confounded with a taste for oppression, and the holy rites of freedom with a contempt of law; where the light thrown by conscience on human actions is dim, and where nothing seems to be any longer forbidden or allowed, honorable or shameful, false or true? — Alexis De Tocqueville

If you could be any character on The Next Generation, who would you be?"
"Easy," Solomon said. "Data. For sure."
"That makes sense," Clark said.
"You?"
"I always liked Wesley Crusher."
"What?" Solomon was appalled. "Nobody likes Wesley Crusher."
"Why not?" Lisa asked.
"Because he's a total Mary Sue," Solomon said. "He's too perfect."
"But he's always saving the day," Clark argued. "Like, always."
"Exactly. He's just a talking deus ex machina. Everybody on the ship treats him like a dumb kid, then he saves them at the last minute and, every single time, they go right back to treating him like a dumb kid again. Do I need to remind you that the starship Enterprise is full of genius scientists and engineers? Why's this kid who can't get into Starfleet Academy smarter than all of them?"
"Good point," Clark said. "He's still my choice, though. — John Corey Whaley

Herr Hitler is the very person he wants to eradicate. He might have started out with good intentions, but he is mentally unbalanced and now almost insane." "Then how come he is loved by the whole nation?" Harold interjected. "His first programs of building the Autobahn, of installing the Reichsarbeitsdienst (national labor service) were almost strokes of genius. This endeared him with our people suffering from unemployment. Then he promised things which he is unable to deliver. His hypnotic power as an orator causes the people to cheer. They don't love him. They are simply mesmerized by a charlatan. — Horst Christian

Titus's jaw dropped. 'Those caravanists, they were mages?'
'They most certainly were.'
'But one fainted and two reached for their rifles when they saw the sand wyvern.'
'It's a good policy for at least one member of the group to pretend to fall unconscious at a mage sighting. And I always think the rifles are a touch of genius - any time you see someone holding a firearm, your instinct is to dismiss that person as a nonmage. — Sherry Thomas

Geniuses are commonly believed to excel other men in their power of sustained attention ... But it is their genius making them attentive, not their attention making geniuses of them. — William James

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 genius of art finds sanctuary among children and madmen to survive.That is who we are. — Marilyn Manson

Great minds that are healthy are never considered geniuses, while this sublime qualification is lavished on brains that are often inferior but are slightly touched by madness. — Guy De Maupassant

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

Any language is a supreme achievement of a uniquely human collective genius, as divine and endless a mystery as a living organism." A — Steven Pinker

As in digging for precious metals in the mines, much earthy rubbish has first to be troublesomely handled and thrown out; so, in digging in one's soul for the fine gold of genius, much dullness and common-place is first brought to light. — Herman Melville

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

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

Any man's greatness is a tribute to the nobility of all mankind, so when we celebrate the genius of [Leo] Tolstoy, we say, "Look! One of our boys made it! Look what we're capable of!" — Mel Brooks

What is genius, anyway, if it isn't the ability to give an adequate response to a great challenge? — Bette Greene

I started playing bass in my friend's band for some reason. It was just something I did because, well, he asked me if I wanted to play bass and he played me this song - Nirvana's version of "Molly's Lips", the Vaselines song - and he said, "You can do this! This is not hard!" and it's like a two-note song. I learned that and then I thought I was a genius. — Jens Lekman

He is the organiser of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in [London]. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. Sherlock Holmes in 'The Final Problem — Anonymous

David Fincher is a genius. — Chuck Palahniuk

Where Chanel came from in France is anyone's guess. She said one thing one day and another thing the next. She was a peasant - and a genius. Peasants and geniuses are the only people who count and she was both. — Diana Vreeland

Not to grow up properly is to retain our 'caterpillar' quality from childhood (where it is a virtue) into adulthood (where it becomes a vice). In childhood our credulity serves us well. It helps us to pack, with extraordinary rapidity, our skulls full of the wisdom of our parents and our ancestors. But if we don't grow out of it in the fullness of time, our caterpillar nature makes us a sitting target for astrologers, mediums, gurus, evangelists and quacks. The genius of the human child, mental caterpillar extraordinary, is for soaking up information and ideas, not for criticizing them. If critical faculties later grow it will be in spite of, not because of, the inclinations of childhood. The blotting paper of the child's brain is the unpromising seedbed, the base upon which later the sceptical attitude, like a struggling mustard plant, may possibly grow. We need to replace the automatic credulity of childhood with the constructive scepticism of adult science. — Richard Dawkins

Genius is nothing more than an extraordinary manifestation of the body. — Arthur Cravan

Humor is one of the elements of genius
admirable as an adjunct; but as soon as it becomes dominant, only a surrogate for genius. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities. — Oscar Wilde

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

What's genius? I don't know but I do know that the difference between a madman and a professional is that a pro does as well as he can within what
he has set out to do and a madman does exceptionally well at what he can't help doing. — Charles Bukowski

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

As Baudelaire said it so beautifully, Emma Bovary is an androgynous character. She cannot be reduced to a gender or a sociological type. She represents something bigger than herself. That was the genius of Flaubert: the ability to combine the general and the particular. — Sophie Barthes

When I heard the book (Thomas Friedman's latest) was actually coming out, I started to worry. Among other things, I knew I would be asked to write the review. The usual ratio of Friedman criticism is 2:1, i.e., two human words to make sense of each single word of Friedmanese. Friedman is such a genius of literary incompetence that even his most innocent passages invite feature-length essays. — Matt Taibbi

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

Genius is merely the capacity for taking infinite pains. — Napoleon Hill

Thought
It does not take
a math genius
to understand that
when you subtract
a mother
from the equation
what remains
is negative. — Kwame Alexander

Innovators and creators are persons who can to a higher degree than average accept the condition of aloneness. They are more willing to follow their own vision, even when it takes them far from the mainland of the human community. Unexplored places do not frighten them- or not, at any rate, as much as they frighten those around them. This is one of the secrets of their power. That which we call genius has a great deal to do with courage and daring, a great deal to do with nerve. — Nathaniel Branden

The true and lasting genius of humour does not drag you thus to boxes labelled 'pathos,' 'humour,' and show you all the mechanism of the inimitable puppets that are going to perform. How I used to laugh at Simon Tapperwit, and the Wellers, and a host more! But I can't do it now somehow; and time, it seems to me, is the true test of humour. It must be antiseptic. — Mark Twain

A writer is a genius not when critics say so, but when her or his book pierces your heart and rips off your blindness with its brilliance. — Ksenia Anske

And to all those who have wondered if Americas beacon still burns as bright - tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.
For that is the true genius of America - that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow. — Barack Obama

But what is our ultimate goal? We want freedom of thought, freedom of action, freedom to fashion our own destiny and build up an India - suited to the genius of her people. We do not wish to make of India a cheap and slavish imitation of the West. We have so far sought to liberalise our government on the Western model. Whether that will satisfy us in the future I cannot say.31 — Savita Narain

Women certainly learn a lot from books oriented toward a masculine world. Why is not the reverse also true? Or are men really so afraid of women's creativity (because they are not themselves at the center of creation, cannot bear children) that a woman writer of genius evokes murderous rage, must be brushed aside with a sneer as "irrelevant"? When — May Sarton

A habitual indulgence in the inarticulate is a sure sign of the philosopher who has not learned to think, the poet who has not learned to write, the painter who has not learned to paint, and the impression that has not learned to express itself
all of which are compatible with an immensity of genius in the inexpressible soul. — George Santayana

Sensibility alters from generation to generation in everybody, whether we will or no; but expression is only altered by a man of genius. — T. S. Eliot

I think 'Pan's Labyrinth' is genius. — Joe Dante

The genius of the word is that it's more of an expression than a word. Nook — Durga Chew-Bose

The genius of rock music is that it matched the cultural hysteria around it. — Don DeLillo

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

I ask the citizens of this Republic whether such a state of things is to be suffered to pass unnoticed, and the hearts of widows, orphans, and patriots to be broken, and their wrongs left without redress? No! I invoke the genius of our Constitution. I appeal to the patriotism of Americans to stop this unlawful and unholy procedure; and pray that God may defend this nation from the dreadful effects of such outrages. — Joseph Smith Jr.

Clearly, I'm a genius at picking boyfriends. In my defense, have you seen what there is to choose from? The sea is big, but the fish are scraggly, immature, and obsessed with video games. — Nicole Christie

I myself have always disliked being called a "genius." It is fascinating to notice how quick people have been to intuit this aversion and avoid using the term. — John Lanchester

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

Marguerite Young is unquestionably a genius. — Kurt Vonnegut

How somebody is different?? Not different but genius?? (Find the answer, that's my quiz for you... No, jokers it's to easy with jokers) — Deyth Banger

The difference between genius and stupidity is: genius has its limits. — Alexandre Dumas-fils

A genius. A criminal mastermind. A millionaire. And he is only twelve years old. — Eoin Colfer

Genius is not born. You make yourself a genius by imagination and perspiration. — Debasish Mridha

Existential psychotherapy is the movement which, although standing on one side on the scientific analysis owed chiefly to the genius of Freud , also brings back into the picture the understanding of man on the deeper and broader level man as the being who is human. It is based on the assumption that it is possible to have a science of man which does not fragmentize man and destroy his humanity at the same moment as it studies him. It unites science and ontology . — Rollo May

No person is so grand or wise or perfect as to be the master of another person. Teacher, perhaps. Setter of good example, perhaps. Genius, perhaps. But master, no. — Karl Hess

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

Seinfeld has his way of telling jokes - and I'm not comparing myself to Seinfeld, his genius is observing the small details of everyday life and finding humor in it. — Nick Kroll

You're a genius! And the proof is that both common people and intellectuals find your work completely incoherent. — Woody Allen

The degree of genius necessary to please us is pretty nearly the same proportion that we ourselves have. — Claude Adrien Helvetius

I would suggest that our imagination is a tiny shard of God's infinite genius that we have within us simply because we were created in God's image. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

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

Throughout the history of the Deutschritter the German genius is very evident, romantic idealism implemented with utter ruthlessness. — Desmond Seward

From the standpoint of education, genius means essentially 'giving birth to the joy in learning.' I'd like to suggest that this is the central task of all educators. It is the genius of the student that is the driving force behind all learning. Before educators take on any of the other important issues in learning, they must first have a thorough understanding of what lies at the core of each student's intrinsic motivation to learn, and that motivation originates in each student's genius. — Thomas Armstrong