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Genius Quotations




Unknown Author (top)
A genius is one who shoots at something no one else can see - and hits it.
- Unknown Author


Max Beerbohm (top)
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 Beerbohm


Josh Billings (top)
Genius ain't anything more than elegant common sense.
- Josh Billings


Napoleon Bonaparte (top)
Men of genius are meteors destined to burn themselves out in lighting up their age.
- Napoleon Bonaparte


Phillips Brooks (top)
Genius, by its very intensity, decrees a special path of fire for its vivid power.
- Phillips Brooks


Samuel Butler (top)
Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds.
- Samuel Butler


Lydia Maria Child (top)
Genius hath electric power which earth can never tame.
- Lydia Maria Child


Samuel Taylor Coleridge (top)
Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the company of vulgar people.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge


Charles Caleb Colton (top)
A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition.
- Charles Caleb Colton


Robertson Davies (top)
He was a genius - that is to say, a man who does superlatively and without obvious effort something that most people cannot do by the uttermost exertion of their abilities.
- Robertson Davies


Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (top)
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle


Thomas Alva Edison (top)
Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.
- Thomas Alva Edison


Ralph Waldo Emerson (top)
In every work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


Buckminster Fuller (top)
I am convinced all of humanity is born with more gifts than we know. Most are born geniuses and just get de-geniused rapidly.
- Buckminster Fuller


Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (top)
If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


William Hazlitt (top)
Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labor in it, but they labor in it because they excel.
- William Hazlitt


Elbert Hubbard (top)
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
- Elbert Hubbard


John F. Kennedy (top)
I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.
- John F. Kennedy


Oscar Levant (top)
There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
- Oscar Levant


Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (top)
Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.
- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg


James Russell Lowell (top)
Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is.
- James Russell Lowell


Robert S. Lynd (top)
Every man of genius is considerably helped by being dead.
- Robert S. Lynd


Carl Sagan (top)
But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
- Carl Sagan


Johann Christoph friedrich von Schiller (top)
Every true genius is bound to be naive.
- Johann Christoph friedrich von Schiller


Lucius Annaeus Seneca (top)
There is no great genius without some touch of madness.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca


George Bernard Shaw (top)
Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius.
- George Bernard Shaw


Jonathan Swift (top)
When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
- Jonathan Swift


Mark Twain (top)
Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by themselves or by others.
- Mark Twain


James McNeill Whistler (top)
I can't tell you if genius is hereditary, because heaven has granted me no offspring.
- James McNeill Whistler


E.B. White (top)
Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.
- E.B. White


Oscar Wilde (top)
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
- Oscar Wilde