Top 100 What Is Genius Quotes
#2. What is Genius?- To aspire to a lofty aim and to will the means to that aim.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#3. For what is genius, I ask you, but the capacity to be obsessed? ... We have all been geniuses, you and I; but sooner or later it is beaten out of us, the glory faded, and by the age of seven most of us are nothing but wretched little adults.
Steven Millhauser
#4. And what is Genius but finer love, a love impersonal, a love of the flower and perfection of things, and a desire to draw a new picture or copy of the same? It looks to the cause and life: it proceeds from within outward, whilst Talent goes from without inward.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#5. What is genius, anyway, if it isn't the ability to give an adequate response to a great challenge?
Bette Greene
#6. What is genius? It is the power to be a boy again at will.
James M. Barrie
#8. Physicians can't really dictate our protocols. They can inform us to the extent that they can as to what would best serve us, because we're not medical geniuses, no human being is, but intrinsically there is inside of each one of us, the knowing of what's going on.
Maya Tiwari
#9. Work is honorable. It is good therapy for most problems. It is the antidote for worry. It is the equalizer for deficiency of native endowment. Work makes it possible for the average to approach genius. What we may lack in aptitude, we can make up for in performance ...
J. Richard Clarke
#10. Girls are genius at getting through sexual abuse. Often the only way to get through is not to feel. And that is exactly what these fantasy worlds allow: They give girls a place to go so they don't have to be present in their violated bodies. Brilliant.
Patti Feuereisen
#11. One good thing about being a woman is we haven't too many examples yet of what a genius looks like. It could be me.
Sheila Heti
#12. What has been done in the world - the works of genius - cost nothing. There is no painful effort, but it is the spontaneous flowing of the thought. Shakespeare made his Hamlet as a bird weaves its nest.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#13. The book is what we have come to expect from Marion: challenging, subtle and nuanced analyses, dassling formulations, . a provocative and original philosophical genius.
John D. Caputo
#14. An idea is like a rare bird which cannot be seen. What one sees is the trembling of the branch it has just left.
Lawrence Durrell
#15. What good is being a math genius if your life doesn't add up?
Marty Rubin
#16. All the labor of all the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction. So now, my friends, if that is true, and it is true, what is the point?
Bertrand Russell
#17. It is crazy. It's our first kid, and all of a sudden, she identifies letters as what they are, and you go, 'This kid is a genius - she's obviously some sort of savant!'
Max Greenfield
#18. Postal inspectors have been given advanced warning that Publishers Clearinghouse is sending packets of laundry detergent that could be mistaken for anthrax. Oh, good timing. What genius came up with this promotion? What's next - a ticking alarm clock? Let's put that in a box.
Jay Leno
#19. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or do in a circumstance unexpected by other people: it is reflection, meditation.
Andrew Roberts
#20. I believe that instinct is what makes a genius a genius.
Bob Dylan
#21. I'm convinced that Bach is the greatest genius who ever walked among us, and the Brandenburgs are what he wrote when he was happy.
Douglas Adams
#22. If I always appear prepared, it is because before entering an undertaking, I have meditated long and have foreseen what might occur. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly and secretly what I should do in circumstances unexpected by others; it is thought and preparation
Napoleon Bonaparte
#23. After upwards of two thousand years Epicurus has been exonerated from the reproach that the doctrines of his philosophy recommended the pleasures of sensuality and voluptuousness as the chief good. Calumny may rest on genius a considerable part of a world's duration; what then is the value of fame?
William Benton Clulow
#24. Realism to be effective must be a matter of selection.genius chooses its materials with a view to their beauty and effectiveness; mere talent copies what it thinks is nature, only to find it has been deceived by the external grossness of things.
Julia Marlowe
#25. Men of genius are far more abundant than is supposed. In fact, to appreciate thoroughly the work of what we call genius, is to possess all the genius by which the work was produced.
Edgar Allan Poe
#26. The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
#27. I have no physical genius about me. I can't dribble a ball and run at the same time, I can't do lay-ups - I'm not an athlete. But my experience as a kid was, I was made fun of so much that what I did then, is, I wouldn't participate. And I think I cheated myself out of a lot of fun.
Rich Mullins
#28. A truly great life. That is what humanity deserves. Not an average life, not even a normal one-a life in which genius is not an anomaly but an expectation. But to achieve such things
Madeleine Roux
#29. The thing about genius is it will never yield to circumstances. Genius regards what's given as the beginning of its need to find or devise something else.
June Jordan
#30. So many of the people who want to be like Steve have the asshole side down. What they're missing is the genius part.
Brent Schlender
#31. And indeed if you think you're a genius at something what you achieve is very much according to your expectations; if you think you're no good, you're not going to get anywhere.
Diana Wynne Jones
#32. But then the general trouble with ignorance is always that the ignorant person has no idea that that's what they are. You can be ignorant and stupid and go through your whole life without ever encountering any evidence against the hypothesis that you're a genius.
Louis De Bernieres
#33. What is it, the difference between ordinary people and those with genius? Not just ordinary people either. Intelligent people, sensitive ones, exceptionally talented ones. Even people like Sonja who give everything and then more, who work harder than seems possible on the thing they love.
Anna Smaill
#35. Despite his genius, what Darwin didn't know about sex could fill volumes. This is one of them.
Christopher Ryan
#36. And soon all our minds will be flat as a pancake,
With no room for genius exaltation or heartache.
And our children and theirs will preen, smirk and chatter,
With not even the sense to ask what is the matter.
Stevie Smith
#37. It is not in the outward and visible world of material life that the Celtic genius of Wales or Ireland can at this day hope to count for much; it is in the inward world of thought and science.What it has been, what is has done, what it will be or will do, as a matter of modern politics.
Matthew Arnold
#38. Talent is what you possess; genius is what possesses you.
Malcolm Cowley
#39. The whole genius of an author consists in describing well, and delineating character well. Homer, Plato, Virgil, Horace only excel other writers by their expressions and images; we must indicate what is true if we mean to write naturally, forcibly and delicately.
Jean De La Bruyere
#40. What a great genius this water is! It has thousands of different beautiful faces: It is a rainbow, an ocean, a lake, an iceberg, a waterfall, a river, a drop, a fog ... What a great genius this water is!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#41. I say I'm in love with her. What does that mean?
It means I review my future and my past in the light of this feeling. It is as though I wrote in a foreign language that I am suddenly able to read. Wordlessly, she explains me to myself. LIke genius she is ignorant of what she does.
Jeanette Winterson
#42. Life is very narrow. Bring any club or company of intelligent men together again after ten years, and if the presence of some penetrating and calming genius could dispose them to frankness, what a confession of insanities would come up!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#44. Art is the business of selling fetishes, sacred relics once touched by genius: what the forger offers the gullible buyer is not art, it is "authenticity
Frank Wynne
#45. And what fun is it being a genius if no one appreciates you?
Brent Weeks
#46. The genius of culture is to create an ontological system so compelling that what is inside and outside of a person are viewed as of a piece, no seams and patches noticeable.
Richard Shweder
#47. Even granting that the genius subjected to the test of critical inspection emerges free from all error, we should consider that everything he has discovered in a given domain is almost nothing in comparison with what is left to be discovered.
Santiago Ramon Y Cajal
#48. Because I've learned that you can't control what other people are going to think about you. The best you can do in life is not piss yourself off.
Megan McCafferty
#49. This is your genius: your own profound desire to write. Your love of words and language, your attempt to get to what poet Donald Hall called "the unsayable said." If
Kim Addonizio
#50. I'm doing what all modern artists do now, which is nothing - just sit around and dream about things. I'll do what they call 'the stroke of genius.'
Billy Al Bengston
#51. Genius is among other minds what the carbuncle is among gemstones; it radiates its own light while the others only reflect what they receive.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#52. Of course creativity is a mystery. We don't know what drives it or what constitutes it. It's one of those things, like genius, you know it when you see it but it's impossible to define.
Daniel Tammet
#53. 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
#54. What drives intellectuals and professors crazy is somebody with a high school diploma who made a fortune in business. They agree with Lenin, who thought success in business was a matter of luck, when in reality it is a matter of genius.
James Cook
#55. To be original you must listen to the voice of your heart rather than the clamor of the world - and have the courage to teach publicly what you have learned. The source of all genius is sincerity; men would be wiser if they were more moral.
Ludwig Borne
#56. What's genius about 'Gravity' is that you are close upon the actors, but 3D works best when you have foreground, middle ground and background.
Gavin Hood
#57. What men want is not talent, it is purpose; in other words, not the power to achieve, but will to labor. I believe that labor judiciously and continuously applied becomes genius.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
#58. If it turns out that the Mayans are right and the world is going to end, you know what this means?
Lindsay Lohan is a genius. She's been partying her brains out. She owes taxes. She's crashing cars. She's a genius!
Jay Leno
#59. A few nights later, I secretly hope that I might be a genius. Why else can no amount of sleeping pills fell my brain? But in the morning my daughter asks me what a cloud is and I cannot say.
Jenny Offill
#60. When you hear the party that glorified Occupy Wall Street blast success; when you hear them minimize the genius of the men and women who make jobs out of nothing, is that what you teach your children about work?
Artur Davis
#61. Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it
Henry David Thoreau
#62. I think that when people hear the president [George W. Bush] speak, frankly, they think he's really stupid. But what people don't realize is that there's a genius behind that stupidity, and that genius is Harlan McCraney.
Arianna Huffington
#63. Genius: 1. to believe your own thought. To believe that what is true for you is ultimately true. 2. a sledgehammer. 3. the fruit of labour and thought. 4. soul. 5. the ability to put into effect what is in your mind. 6. something one can become.
Heinrich Heine
#64. Genius is not only a what or a who, it is a where. It is grounded in a place every single time.
Eric Weiner
#65. The egalitarian doctrine is manifestly contrary to all the facts established by biology and by history. Only fanatical partisans of this theory can contend that what distinguishes the genius from the dullard is entirely the effect of postnatal influences.
Ludwig Von Mises
#66. And is that all you can say for him?" cried Marianne, indignantly. "But what are his manners on more intimate acquaintance? What his pursuits, his talents, and genius?" Sir John was rather puzzled.
Jane Austen
#67. What was infinitely more valuable to Wagner, and what excited his gratitude to even more superlative utterance, was the confidence which Liszt showed in his genius, and without which, it is no exaggeration to say, Wagner's greatest works would probably have remained unwritten.
Richard Wagner
#68. The brilliancy of Aristotle's genius is shown by this alone, that he discovered, in the expression of the value of commodities, a relation of equality. The peculiar conditions of the society in which he lived, alone prevented him from discovering what, "in truth," was at the bottom of this equality.
Karl Marx
#69. A product is usually created to improve people's lives; otherwise, why buy it? I'm no genius, but I am an American, and gosh-darnit, I consume, so I know what I'm talking about.
Steven Weber
#70. You are not a woman. You may try-but you can never imagine what it is to have a man's force of genius in you and yet to suffer the slavery of being a girl.
George Eliot
#71. What we've got here is a lunatic genius ghost-in-the-computer monorail that likes riddles and goes faster than the speed of sound. Welcome to the fantasy version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Stephen King
#72. Alber Elbaz is just a genius. He'll be in a dinner jacket and he doesn't care what time of day it is: I love that about him. He just marches to the beat of his own drum.
Pharrell Williams
#75. Mediocrity is always in a rush; but whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing with consideration. For genius is nothing more nor less than doing well what anyone can do badly.
Amelia E. Barr
#76. It is not difficult to grasp and express thoughts that float on the stream of current opinion: but to think and rightly utter what is permanently true and interesting, what shall appeal to the best minds a thousand years hence, as it appeals to them to-day, this is the work of genius.
John Lancaster Spalding
#77. When people speak of the borderline between genius and madness, why is it so evident what they mean?
James Gleick
#78. I've met some real talents that were ... real talents and I've met some real talents that were incredible people.People like Al Williamson, Gray Morrow, to a certain extent Jim Steranko, who is an institution all to himself. What a talent. What a genius talent.
Mike Royer
#79. What allows genius to flower is not neurosis but its opposite... ordinary Sunday-school virtues such as tenacity and above all the ability to survive disappointment.
Joan Acocella
#80. What drives men of genius is their obsession with the idea that what has already been done is not good enough.
Eugene Delacroix
#81. A man writes because he is tormented, because he doubts. He needs to constantly prove to himself and the others that he's worth something. And if I know for sure that I'm a genius? Why write then? What the hell for?
Andrei Tarkovsky
#82. One who knows what he or she knows as well as what he or she does not know is a genius.
Abhijit Naskar
#83. The frenetic pace of modern life can lead to an obscuring or even a loss of what is truly human ... Perhaps more than in other periods of history, our time is in need of that genius which belongs to women, and which can ensure sensitivity for human beings in every circumstance.
Pope John Paul II
#84. The only difference between a genius and one of common capacity is that the former anticipates and explores what the latter accidentally hits upon; but even the man of genius himself more frequently employs the advantages that chance presents to him;
Guillaume-Thomas Francois Raynal
#85. To be a mere verbal critic is what no man of genius would be if he could; but to be a critic of true taste and feeling is what no man without genius could be if he would.
Charles Caleb Colton
#87. To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.
Henri Frederic Amiel
#88. What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the right road empirically, following one's nose, taking shortcuts.
Italo Calvino
#89. I wouldn't want to compare myself to David Byrne whom I consider a genius, but what I think what we have in common is that he's also a guy who is very interested in the world and who has a lot of passions beyond singing and playing guitar.
Anthony Bourdain
#90. Let us leave to the brain what belongs to it, and agree that the work of the men of genius is of the superhuman, the offspring of man.
Victor Hugo
#91. What is the most overrated skill for an entrepreneur? The most overrated skill is skill. Luck is more important. The entrepreneur gets credit for being this genius, when really he was just at the right place at the right time.
Ken Hendricks
#92. Bobbie Ann Mason's genius only grows stronger and wiser and funnier with every new book, and Zigzagging Down a Wild Trail is my absolute favorite so far. What an ear she has for the telling phrase, what an eye for the heartbreaking detail. These new stories are stunning.
Josephine Humphreys
#93. Marvin Gaye is our John Lennon. The longer he's gone, the more young people appreciate his art. 'What's Going On' was a work of genius far ahead of it's time.
Janet Jackson
#94. I think Yelena Akhtiorskaya is a genius. What she manages to do, linguistically and emotionally, in the span of a single sentence, is astonishing.
Keith Gessen
#95. Robert Burns enriched Scottish song with his genius and is mainly responsible for the rich treasure house of song that we enjoy today. He collected folk songs, retained the melodic line, kept what words were usable and rewrote the rest. He didn't claim ownership.
Jimmy Reid
#96. Happenstance is the myth of the simple mind, for it is the deliberate genius of God that what appears entirely disjointed always reveals itself to be stunningly seamless. And it is in reflecting on such stunning ingenuity that our faith becomes seamless.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#97. Unlearn your knowledge about what WAS working to understand what is working NOW
Roger James Hamilton
#98. Consistency is a virtue for trains: what we want from a philosopher is insights, whether he comes by them consistently or not.
Stephen Vizinczey
#99. I recognize Eric for what he is: an Erudite disguised as a Dauntless, a genius as well as a sadist, a hunter of the Divergent.
Veronica Roth
#100. What basically happens is that when a company becomes great, and I'm being a bit rude here, people think they're some kind of genius. So now we can move into all sorts of other businesses because the net bottom line is, it's because we're just geniuses. They become overconfident and expand too far.
Jorgen Vig Knudstorp
