Genius Quotes

There's no such thing as a genius in politics, or at least I have never met one. There are only human beings, some better than others, who rise or fall on the challenges they meet.

Joseph Jacques Jean Chrtien

Genius does what it must, talent does what it can.

Robert Bulwer Lytton

Naturalness is the seal of genius.

Franois Joachim de Pierre de Bernis

Clever men will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness; every authority rouses their ridicule, every superstition amuses them, every convention moves them to contradiction. Only force finds favor in their eyes, and they have no toleration for anything that is not purely natural and spontaneous. And yet ten clever men are not worth one man of talent, nor ten men of talent worth one man of genius. And in the individual, feeling is more than cleverness, reason is worth as much as feeling, and conscience has it over reason. If, then, the clever man is not mockable, he may at least be neither loved, nor considered, nor esteemed. He may make himself feared, it is true, and force others to respect his independence; but this negative advantage, which is the result of a negative superiority, brings no happiness with it. Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing.

Henri-Frdric Amiel

...talent and genius operate outside the rules, and theory conflicts with practice.

Carl von Clausewitz

Genius is fostered by energy.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

There is no genius free from some tincture of madness.

Seneca

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.

Aristotle

Thrift is the really romantic thing; economy is more romantic than extravagance... thrift is poetic because it is creative; waste is unpoetic because it is waste... if a man could undertake to make use of all the things in his dustbin, he would be a broader genius than Shakespeare.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The eye of genius has always a plaintive expression, and its natural language is pathos.

Lydia Maria Child

Genius is the gold in the mine; talent is the miner that works and brings it out.

Lady Marguerite Blessington

Dullness is so much stronger than genius because there is so much more of it, and it is better organised and more naturally cohesive.

Samuel Butler

Genius is always accompanied by enthusiasm.

Bryant McGill

To understand Europe, you have to be a genius - or French.

Madeleine Albright

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