Quotes & Sayings About The Word Genius

Words, words, word. Once, I had the gift. I could make love out of words as a potter makes cups of clay. Love that overthrows empire. Love that binds two hearts together, come hellfire & brimstone. For sixpence a line, I could cause a riot in a nunnery. But now
I have lost my gift. It's as if my quill is broken, as if the organ of my imagination has dried up, as if the proud -illegible word- of my genius has collapsed. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Remember William Blake who said: "Improvement makes straight, straight roads, but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius."
The truth is, life itself, is always startling, strange, unexpected. But when the truth is told about it everybody knows at once that it is life itself and not made up.
But in ordinary fiction, movies, etc, everything is smoothed out to seem plausible
villains made bad, heroes splendid, heroines glamorous, and so on, so that no one believes a word — Brenda Ueland

There exists [a] word in German, Geschichte, which designates not accomplished history, but history in the present, doubtless determined in large part, yet only in part, by the already accomplished past; for a history which is present, which is living, is also open to a future that is uncertain, unforeseeable, not yet accomplished, and therefore aleatory. Living history obeys only a constant (not a law): the constant of class struggle. Marx did not use the term 'constant', which I have taken from Levi-Strauss, but an expression of genius: 'tendential law', capable of inflecting (but not contradicting) the primary tendential law, which means that a tendency does not possess the form or figure of linear law, but that it can bifurcate under the impact of an encounter with another tendency, and so on ad infinitum. At each intersection the tendency can take a path that is unforeseeable because it is aleatory. — Louis Althusser

He fills me with horror and I do not hate him. How can I hate him, Raoul? Think of Erik at my feet, in the house on the lake, underground. He accuses himself, he curses himself, he implores my forgiveness! ... He confesses his cheat. He loves me! He lays at my feet an immense and tragic love ... He has carried me off for love! ... He has imprisoned me with him, underground, for love! ... But he respects me: he crawls, he moans, he weeps! ... And, when I stood up, Raoul, and told him that I could only despise him if he did not, then and there, give me my liberty ... he offered it ... he offered to show me the mysterious road ... Only ... only he rose too ... and I was made to remember that, though he was not an angel, nor a ghost, nor a genius, he remained the voice ... for he sang. And I listened ... and stayed! ... That night, we did not exchange another word. He sang me to sleep. — Gaston Leroux

PHOSPHORESCENCE. Now there's a word to lift your hat to ... to find that phosphorescence, that light within, that's the genius behind poetry. — Emily Dickinson

What a vapid job title our culture gives to those honorable laborers the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians variously called Learned Men of the Magic Library, Scribes of the Double House of Life, Mistresses of the House of Books, or Ordainers of the Universe. 'Librarian' - that mouth-contorting, graceless grind of a word, that dry gulch in the dictionary between 'libido' and 'licentious' - it practically begs you to envision a stoop-shouldered loser, socks mismatched, eyes locked in a permanent squint from reading too much microfiche. If it were up to me, I would abolish the word entirely and turn back to the lexicological wisdom of the ancients, who saw librarians not as feeble sorters and shelvers but as heroic guardians. In Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian cultures alike, those who toiled at the shelves were often bestowed with a proud, even soldierly, title: Keeper of the Books. - p.113 — Miles Harvey

Crap was not a bad word. It was the shortened name of the marketing genius of the best known flush toilet, John Crapper. Really. — Faith Hunter

He who seldom speaks, and with one calm well-timed word can strike dumb the loquacious, is a genius or a hero. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

As one whose genius has been duly certified by several dozen learned biographers, I think I may say a word or two on the topic of intellectual summits; which is simply that clarity of thought is a shining point in a vast expanse of unrelieved darkness. Genius is not so much a light as it is a constant awareness of the surrounding gloom, and its typical cowardice is to bathe in its own glow and avoid, as much as possible, looking out beyond its boundary. — Stanislaw Lem

The artist, the poet, the musician and the philosopher show in their gifts throughout their lives the heritage of the jinn. The words genius and jinn come from a Sanskrit word Jnana, which means knowledge. The jinns. Therefore, are the beings of knowledge; whose hunger is for knowledge, whose joy is in learning, in understanding, and whose work is in inspiring, and bring light and joy to others. In every kind of knowledge that exists, the favorite knowledge to a jinn is the knowledge of truth, in which is the fulfillment of its life's purpose. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

I'm that annoying?"
"Well, you have pretty sharp mouth."
"I don't want to sound like a smartass, but sir I can't handle my own smartassness for being uncontrollably sparkling from me and mentally hurts you due to its awesomeness. I'm just unbelievably genius. Dummies like you call us 'crazy' but it's such a strong word."
"See? That's why people hates you." "And 'us'?"
"I'm pretty sure I'm not the only living genius. — Rea Lidde

If the written word has contributed anything at all to our developing species and our half developed culture, it is this: Great writing has been a staff to lean on, a mother to consult, a wisdom to pick up stumbling folly, a strength in weakness and a courage to support sick cowardice. — John Steinbeck

The first step in gaining the upper hand is always to seize the moral high ground, and to be able to do this with no more than a single word is nothing short of genius. I — Alan Bradley

Genius is an overused word. The world has known only about a half dozen geniuses. I got only fairly near. — Fritz Kreisler

After all, what is it?- this indescribable something which men will persist in terming "genius"? I agree with Buffon- with Hogarth- it is but diligence after all.
Look at me!- how I labored- how I toiled- how I wrote! Ye Gods, did I not write? I knew not the word "ease." By day I adhered to my desk, and at night, a pale student, I consumed the midnight oil. You should have seen me- you should. I leaned to the right. I leaned to the left. I sat forward. I sat backward. I sat tete baissee (as they have it in the Kickapoo), bowing my head close to the alabaster page. And, through all, I- wrote. Through joy and through sorrow, I-wrote. Through hunger and through thirst, I-wrote. Through good report and through ill report- I wrote. Through sunshine and through moonshine, I-wrote. What I wrote it is unnecessary to say. The style!- that was the thing. I caught it from Fatquack- whizz!- fizz!- and I am giving you a specimen of it now. — Edgar Allan Poe

Genius is another word for magic, and the whole point of magic is that it is inexplicable. — Margot Fonteyn

I've always said that the word 'genius,' especially in Hollywood, is way overused. — Ted McGinley

This psychic wound appears to be suffered largely by men. Women writers weren't included in the Romantic roll-call, and never had a lot of Genius medals stuck onto them; in fact, the word 'genius' and the word 'woman' just don't fit together in our language, because the kind of eccentricity expected of male 'geniuses' would simply result in the label 'crazy,' should it be practiced by a woman. — Margaret Atwood

I regret that I must so continually use the word genius, as if that should apply only to a caste as well defined from those below as income-tax payers are from the untaxed. The word genius was very probably invented by a man who had small claims on it himself; greater men would have understood better what to be a genius really was, and probably they would have come to see that the word could be applied to most people. Goethe said that perhaps only a genius is able to understand a genius. — Otto Weininger

One of the commonest mistakes and one of the costliest is thinking that success is due to some genius, some magic - something or other which we do not possess. Success is generally due to holding on, and failure to letting go. You decide to learn a language, study music, take a course of reading, train yourself physically. Will it be success or failure? It depends upon how much pluck and perseverance that word decide contains. The decision that nothing can overrule, the grip that nothing can detach will bring success. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

I think it crucial to recognize that you can't straightforwardly "adapt" Douglas Adams. Douglas's genius was uniquely his own. What I've tried to do here, and in every other version, is to be true to the character and the Adams' tone and approach to narrative, his unique brand of word-play and "idea-play" humor. — Arvind Ethan David

What do you think that fish is?' Sam asked Astrid.
She peered closely at the alleged fish. 'I think that's an example of Pesce inedibilis,' she said.
'Yeah?' Sam made a face. 'Do you think it's okay to eat?'
Astrid sighed theatrically. 'Pesce inedibilis? Inedible? Joke, duh. Try to keep up, Sam, I made that really easy for you.'
Sam smiled. 'You know, a real genius would have known I wouldn't get it. Ergo, you are not a real genius. Hah. That's right. I threw down an 'ergo.'
She gave him a pitying look. 'That's very impressive, Sam. Especially from a boy who has twenty-two different uses for the word 'dude. — Michael Grant

When the sacredness of one's word is matched in the attributes of his character throughout, all that constitutes a man, then we find that there is something in a man's life greater than his occupation or his achievements; grander than acquisition or wealth; higher than genius; more enduring than fame. — Orison Swett Marden

Here is the essence of mankind's creative genius: not the edifices of civilization nor the bang-flash weapons which can end it, but the words which fertilize new concepts like spermatoza attacking an ovum. It might be argued that the Siamese-twin infants of word/idea are the only contribution the human species can, will, or should make to the reveling cosmos. (Yes, our DNA is unique, but so is a salamander's. Yes, we construct artifacts, but so have species ranging from beavers to the architecture ants ... Yes, we weave real fabric things from the dreamstuff of mathematics, but the universe is hardwired with arithmetic. Scratch a circle and pi peeps out. Enter a new solar system and Tycho Brahe's formulae lie waiting under the black velvet cloak of space/time. But where has the universe hidden a word under its outer layer of biology, geometry, or insensate rock?) — Dan Simmons

Mrs. Heath wanted to sprinkle their minds with grass seed and watch the blades spike up through the earth, flat and predictable as a golf course. She wanted dependable students, well fed but not necessarily nourished. But he was not in that category. Admittedly, he could not count on his perceptions of letters and words, and he was not always accurate. He misused words most when he liked their sound. A sentence had a kind of music, and the word sounded right. The definitions were never as interesting as the sound they made coming out of your mouth. He rolled their flavors around on his tongue, tasting every nook and cranny, but he could not be trusted to deliver the right answer and she would never give him better than a C, no matter what genius work he produced. The way he saw it, his mind was a big unruly field of wildflowers. One day he would shower the world with blossoms. — Elizabeth Brundage

It is no more natural and no less conventional to shout in anger or to kiss in love than to call a table 'a table'. Feelings and passional conduct are invented like words. Even those which like paternity seem to be part and parcel of the human make-up are in reality institutions. It is impossible to superimpose on man a lower layer of behavior which one chooses to call 'natural' followed by a manufactured cultural or spiritual world. Everything is both manufactured and natural in man as it were in the sense that there is not a word, not a form of behavior which does not owe something to purely biological being and which at the same time does not elude the simplicity of animal life and cause forms of vital behavior to deviate from their pre-ordained direction through a sort of leakage and through a genius for ambiguity which might serve to define man. — Maurice Merleau Ponty

I believe God wrote the Word in your essence. That's the genius of my Father. You are born knowing right from wrong. You don't need a book to tell you that! — Eddie Griffin

There is no work of genius which has not been the delight of mankind, no word of genius to which the human heart and soul have not sooner or later responded. — James Russell Lowell

American musicians, instead of investigating ragtime, attempt to ignore it, or dismiss it with a contemptuous word. But that has always been the course of scholasticism in every branch of art. Whatever new thing the 'people' like is poohpoohed; whatever is 'popular' is spoken of as not worth the while. The fact is, nothing great or enduring, especially in music, has ever sprung full-fledged and unprecedented from the brain of any master; the best that he gives to the world he gathers from the hearts of the people, and runs it through the alembic of his genius. — James Weldon Johnson

I do not use the word 'genius' lightly, but if David Bowie is not a genius, then there is no such thing. — Mick Rock

The people of that age were phrase slaves. The abjectness of their servitude is incomprehensible to us. There was a magic in words greater than the conjurer's art. So befuddled and chaotic were their minds that the utterance of a single word could negative the generalizations of a lifetime of serious research and thought. Such a word was the adjective UTOPIAN. The mere utterance of it could damn any scheme, no matter how sanely conceived, of economic amelioration or regeneration. Vast populations grew frenzied over such phrases as "an honest dollar" and "a full dinner pail." The coinage of such phrases was considered strokes of genius. — Jack London

A life path may change because of important decisions or events. Those were what drove my current path.
But sometimes the smallest event can also drive a turn. In the case of Eli Vanto, that force was a single, overheard word.
Chiss. Where had Cadet Vanto heard that name? What did it mean to him? He had already spoken one reason, but there might well be others. Indeed, the full truth might have several layers. But what were they?
On a ship as large as this, there was only one practical way to find out.
Thus did my path take yet another turn. As, certainly, did his. — Timothy Zahn

The power of "can't": The word "can't" makes strong people weak, blinds people who can see, saddens happy people, turns brave people into cowards, robs a genius of their brilliance, causes rich people to think poorly, and limits the achievements of that great person living inside us all. — Robert T. Kiyosaki

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

Although, fanciful's origin circa 1627 made me still love the word, even if I'd ruined its applicability to my connection with Snarl. (I mean DASH!) Like, I could totally see Mrs. Mary Poppencock returning home to her cobblestone hut with the thatched roof in Thamesburyshire, Jolly Olde England, and saying to her husband, "Good sir Bruce, would it not be wonderful to have a roof that doesn't leak when it rains on our green shires, and stuff?" And Sir Bruce Poppencock would have been like, "I say, missus, you're very fanciful with your ideas today." To which Mrs. P. responded, "Why, Master P., you've made up a word! What year is it? I do believe it's circa 1627! Let's carve the year
we think
on a stone so no one forgets. Fanciful! Dear man, you are a genius. I'm so glad my father forced me to marry you and allow you to impregnate me every year. — Rachel Cohn

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

In the Immortal word of Socrates...I drank what?

Form the movie Real Genius — Chris Knight

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

Dyslexia is the affliction of a frozen genius. — Stephen Richards

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

Plato spoke of the Sisters of Fate on the last 3 pages of his book, "The Republic" when he said: "Then the Sisters of Fate take all of our choices and weave them on their loom into the fabric of destiny. Hear the word of Lachesis, the daughter of Necessity. Mortal souls, behold a new cycle of life and mortality. Your genius will not be allotted to you, but you will choose your genius; and let him who draws the first lot have the first choice, and the life which he chooses shall be his destiny. Virtue is free, and as a man honors' or dishonors her he will have more or less of her; the responsibility is with the chooser - God is justified" [Quote from Plato's Republic written 360BCE In the Public Domain] — D.M. Hoover

The word creativity is closely linked to the word genius, since both words have the root meaning 'to give birth.' Essentially, creativity designates the capacity to give birth to new ways of looking at things, the ability to make novel connections between disparate things, and the knack for seeing things that might be missed by the typical way of viewing life. — Thomas Armstrong

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

The genius of the Word of God is that it has staying power; it can stand up to repeated exposure. In fact, that's why it is unlike any other book. You may be an expert in a given field. If you read a book in that field two or three times you've got it. But that's never true of the Bible. Read it over and over again, and you'll see things that you've never seen before. — Howard G. Hendricks

The word genius was whispered into my ear the first things I ever Heard while I was still mewling in my crib, laughs Orson (Welles), so it never occured to me that I wasn't until middle age — Barbara Leaming

I don't use the word lightly, in fact, I don't use it at all, but Ben Marcus is a genius, one of the most daring, funny, morally engaged and brilliant writers, someone whose work truly makes a difference in the world. His prose is, for me, awareness objectified-he makes the word new and thus the world. — George Saunders

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

I meow now?" hissed J.Lo when she was gone. "What comes next? Do I juggle fire?"
"Look, I'm sorry, but it's good this happened. Mrs. Hoegaarden will probably tell people you meow, and we'll spread the word, too, and soon if anybody hears Pig they'll just think it's you."
"Yes!" droned J.Lo, throwing his hand up. "A foolproof plan! Thank Mother Ocean that you do not use your genius for evil. — Adam Rex

Alec encapsulated the word genius in every conceivable sense. Frank knew it. He'd always known it. He'd never learned that true genius couldn't be caged because true genius could never be contained. — Zathyn Priest

The word-coining genius, as if thought plunged into a sea of words and came up dripping. — Virginia Woolf

I prefer my first word, 'formidable.' But this was softened by joviality in youth and kindliness in maturity. Genius is formidable and so is goodness; he had both. It is useful in a picture sometimes to introduce a balancing figure to give scale, and I would choose the figure of W. H. Auden as one of comparable impressiveness and goodness, felt as formidable and friendly. — Jocelyn Gibb

The word "genius" isn't applicable in football. A
Genius is a guy like Norman Einstein. — Joe Theismann

Gass once wrote: "Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it." Here is the essence of mankind's creative genius: not the edifices of civilization nor the bang-flash weapons which can end it, but the words which fertilize new concepts like spermatozoa attacking an ovum. It might be argued that the Siamese twin infants of word/idea are the only contribution the human species can, will, or should make to the raveling cosmos. — Dan Simmons

I wouldn't use the word 'scared' for my role as Hitchcock, but it was my most insecure. Taking on such a formidable, giant personality such as Hitchcock; he was one of the great geniuses of world cinema. Sheer genius. — Anthony Hopkins

Would I use the word 'genius' to describe myself? No. 'Alive?' Perhaps. 'Befuddled?' Certainly. — Sean Gibson

I don't like that word 'discovery.' ... Sinatra was the first one to call Ray Charles a genius, he spoke of 'the genius of Ray Charles.' And after that everybody called him a genius. They didn't call him a genius before that though. He was a genius but they didn't call him that ... If a white man hadn't told them, they wouldn't've seen it ... Like, you know, they say Columbus discovered America, he didn't discover America. — Gayl Jones

For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

So perhaps the reason I shuddered at the idea of writing something about 'Christian art' is that to paint a picture or to write a story or to compose a song is an incarnational activity. The artist is a servant who is willing to be a birth-giver. In a very real sense the artist (male or female) should be like Mary, who, when the angel told her that she was to bear the Messiah, was obedient to the command. Obedience is an unpopular word nowadays, but the artist must be obedient to the work, whether it be a symphony, a painting, or a story for a small child. I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius or something very small, comes to the artist and says 'Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me.' And the artist either says 'My soul doth magnify the Lord' and willingly becomes the bearer of the work, or refuses; but the obedient response is not necessicarily a conscious one, and not everyone has the humble, courageous obedience of Mary. — Madeleine L'Engle