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Genius, that power which dazzles mortal eyes,
Is oft but perseverance in disguise.—HENRY W. AUSTIN, Perseverance Conquers All
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I have known no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or defect either physical or spiritual, for what the gods had given him.—MAX BEERBOH M, The Pines
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What is the fierce sting, the cruel driving spur that urges the artist onward, till one is sometimes almost tempted to conclude that genius consists in the sting itself even more than in the gifts and powers that it forces to its service?—GAMALIEL BRADFORD, American Portraits
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Since when was genius found respectable?—ELIZABETH B. BROWNING, Aurora Leigh
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Talk not of genius baffled. Genius is master of man.
Genius does what it must, and talent does what it can.—BULWER-LYTTON, Last Words
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Talent may be in time forgiven, but genius never!—BYRON
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Genius bath electric power
Which earth can never tame,
Bright suns may scorch and dark clouds lower,
Its flash is still the same.—LYDIA M. CHILD, Marius Amid the Ruins of Carthage
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Genius must be born, and never can be taught.—DRYDEN, Epistle to Congreve
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Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.—DRYDEN, Absalom & Achitophel
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Our builders were with want of genius curst,
The second temple was not like the first.—DRYDEN
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Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.—THOMAS A. EDISON
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Every man of genius sees the world at a different angle from his fellows, and there is his tragedy.—HAVELOCK ELLIS, The Dance of Life
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Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.—EMERSON, Representative Men
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For precocity some great price is always demanded sooner or later in life.—MARGARET FULLER, Diary
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Genius will live and thrive without training, but it does not the less reward the watering-pot and pruning-knife.—MARGARET FULLER
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Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labour in it, but they labour in it, because they excel.—HAZLITT, Characteristics
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Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.—WILLIAM JAMES, Psychology
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A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.—SAMUEL JOHNSON, Boswell: Life
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When your Daemon is in charge, do not try to think consciously. Drift, wait, and obey.—KIPLING, Something of Myself
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Contemporary spites do not harm true genius.—ANDREW LANG, Letters to Dead Authors
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Not only is fame (and until recent years even liberty), denied to men of genius during their lives, but even the means of subsistence. After death they receive monuments and rhetoric by way of compensation.—LOMBROSO, The Man of Genius
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The appearance of a single great genius is more than equivalent to the birth of a hundred mediocrities.—LOMBROSO, The Man of Genius
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Good sense travels on the well-worn paths; genius, never. And that is why the crowd, not altogether without reason, is so ready to treat great men as lunatics.—LOMBROSO, The Man of Genius
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I do not believe that there is such a thing as thwarted genius, or that a man may die before his time . .. I have no sympathy for the baffled poet or statesman who blames his failure on the misunderstanding of the rest of the world.—EMIL, LUDWIG, I Believe
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If we are to have genius we must put up with the inconvenience of genius, a thing the world will never do; it wants geniuses, but would like them just like other people.—GEORGE MOORE
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One science only will one genius fit;
So vast is art, so narrow human wit.—POPE, Essay on Criticism
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The comfort and the delight found by genius in itself and its creations, and the inferiority under which other men appear to it, give it so lofty a strain as to make it wholly indifferent to fame among them.—SCHOPENHAUER
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There is no great genius without some touch of madness.—SENECA
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The work of the master reeks not of the sweat of the brow—suggests no effort and is finished from the beginning.—WHISTLER,The Gentle Art of Making Enemies
