Patience is genius. [ Buffon ]

Genius is universal. [ David Dudley Field ]

Genius is intensity. [ Balzac ]

Genius is religious. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Genius borrows nobly. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Genius is clairvoyant. [ Abel Stevens ]

The faculty of growth. [ Coleridge ]

Genius has no brother. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]

Genius is just patience. [ French Proverb ]

The freemasonry of genius. [ Moses Harvey ]

Genius is eternal patience. [ Michael Angelo ]

Love is superior to genius. [ A. de Musset ]

Genius is a nervous disease. [ De Tours ]

Genius speaks only to genius. [ Stanislaus ]

Talent works, genius creates. [ Schumann ]

Genius is only great patience. [ Buffon ]

Genius can never despise labor. [ Abel Stevens ]

Dandyism is a species of genius. [ Hazlitt ]

Women have the genius of charity. [ E. W. Legouve ]

Talent should minister to genius. [ Robert Browning ]

The honors of genius are eternal. [ Propertius ]

Genius invents, wit merely finds. [ Weber ]

Taste is the next gift to genius. [ Lowell ]

Genius does not herd with genius. [ O. W. Holmes ]

Genius is intellect constructive. [ Emerson ]

Genius will reconcile men to much. [ Carlyle ]

Genius is ever a secret to itself. [ Carlyle ]

Genius is ever a riddle to itself. [ Richter ]

The presiding genius of the place.

Steady work turns genius to a loom. [ George Eliot ]

Genius is independent of situation. [ Churchill ]

Enthusiasm is the breath of genius. [ Beaconsfield ]

Talent is form, genius is substance. [ Gutzkow ]

No age is shut against great genius. [ Seneca ]

Poverty is the stepmother of genius. [ H. W. Shaw ]

Wit and humor belong to genius alone. [ Cervantes ]

A person of genius; a brilliant mind. [ French ]

A happy genius is the gift of nature. [ Dryden ]

One science only will one genius fit,
So vast is art, so narrow human wit. [ Pope ]

Genius is mainly an affair of energy. [ Matthew Arnold ]

Genius involves both envy and calumny. [ Pope ]

Necessity is often the spur to genius. [ Balzac ]

Indulge, and to thy genius freely give,
For not to live at ease is not to live. [ Persius ]

O liberty.
Parent of happiness, celestial born
When the first man became a living soul;
His sacred genius thou. [ Dyer ]

One genius has made many clever artists. [ Martial ]

Talent is a cistern; genius, a fountain. [ Whipple ]

Genius points the way; talent pursues it. [ Marie Ebner-Eschenbach ]

Genius is only as rich as it is generous. [ Thoreau ]

Idleness of mind is the blight of genius.

All great men are in some degree inspired. [ Cicero ]

Pluck is not so common nowadays as genius. [ Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband ]

Inspiration and genius - one and the same. [ Victor Hugo ]

Genius is nothing but labour and diligence. [ Hogarth ]

There is but one book for genius, - nature. [ Madame Deluzy ]

Love places a genius and a fool on a level. [ Gresset ]

No enemy is so terrible as a man of genius. [ Disraeli ]

But can the noble mind forever brood,
The willing victim of a weary mood,
On heartless cares that squander life away,
And cloud young Genius brightening into day? [ Campbell ]

Genius is nourished from within and without. [ Willmott ]

The death of censure is the death of genius. [ Simms ]

Stupidity has its sublime as well as genius. [ Wieland ]

Genius is always ascetic, and piety and love. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use. [ William Hazlitt ]

Action, so to speak, is the genius of nature. [ Blair ]

Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius. [ Benjamin Disraeli ]

Genius must be born, and never can be taught. [ John Dryden ]

He alone can claim this name, who writes
With fancy high, and bold and daring flights. [ Horace ]

Genius counts all its miracles poor and short. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Genius is ever the greatest mystery to itself. [ Friedrich Schiller ]

No author is a man of genius to his publisher. [ Heine ]

We measure genius by quality, not by quantity. [ Wendell Phillips ]

Genius! thou gift of Heaven! thou light divine
Amid what dangers art thou doomed to shine! [ Crabbe ]

His genius quite obscured the brightest ray
Of human thought, as Sol's effulgent beams
At morn's approach, extinguished all the stars. [ R. Wynne ]

Genius, thou gift of Heaven! thou light divine! [ Crabbe ]

Not oft near home does genius brightly shine,
No more than precious stones while in the mine. [ Omar Khayyam ]

Without a genius, learning soars in vain;
And, without learning, genius sinks again;
Their force united, crowns the sprightly reign. [ Elphinston ]

And genius hath electric power,
Which earth can never tame;
Bright suns may scorch, and dark clouds lower -
Its flash is still the same. [ Lydia M. Child ]

There are no laws by which we can write Iliads. [ Ruskin ]

Genius is always consistent when most audacious. [ Stedman ]

Philosophy is the rational expression of genius. [ Lamartine ]

Commerce changes the fate and genius of nations. [ T. Gray ]

Genius is always more suggestive than expressive. [ Abel Stevens ]

Genius is an immense capacity for taking trouble. [ Carlyle ]

A woman must be a genius to create a good husband. [ Balzac ]

National enthusiasm is the great nursery of genius. [ Tuckermann ]

Genius finds its own road and carries its own lamp. [ Willmott ]

Genius! thou gift of Heaven! thou Light divine!
Amid what dangers art thou doom'd to shine!
Oft will the body's weakness check thy force,
Oft damp thy Vigour, and impede thy course;
And trembling nerves compel thee to restrain
Thy noble efforts, to contend with pain;
Or Want (sad guest!) will in thy presence come,
And breathe around her melancholy gloom:
To Life's low cares will thy proud thought confine,
And make her sufferings, her impatience, thine. [ Crabbe ]

Genius is nothing but a great capacity for patience. [ Buffon ]

Commonsense is instinct, and enough of it is genius. [ H. W. Shaw ]

Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them. [ Joseph Joubert ]

Mediocrity can talk; but it is for genius to observe. [ Disraeli ]

The inborn geniality of some people amounts to genius. [ Whipple ]

Genius does what it must, and talent does what it can. [ Owen Meredith ]

Genius works in sport, and goodness smiles to the last. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

The lamp of genius burns quicker than the lamp of life. [ Schiller ]

Courage of soul is necessary for the triumphs of genius. [ Mme. de Stael ]

Great eloquence we cannot get, except from human genius. [ Thomas Starr King ]

Genius always gives its best at first, prudence at last. [ Lavater ]

Wit is the god of moments, but genius is the god of ages. [ Bruyere ]

How often we see the greatest genius buried in obscurity! [ Plautus ]

The life of great geniuses is nothing but a sublime storm. [ George Sand ]

Who makes quick use of the moment is a genius of prudence. [ Lavater ]

To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius. [ Amiel ]

Genius only leaves behind it the monuments of its strength. [ Hazlitt ]

The genius, our companion, who rules our natal star, knows. [ Horace ]

Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom. [ J. S. Mill ]

Yet under this rude exterior lies concealed a mighty genius. [ Horace ]

There is no great genius free from some tincture of madness. [ Seneca ]

It is necessary to be almost a genius to make a good husband. [ Balzac ]

Intellect lies behind genius, which is intellect constructive. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Genius, even as it is the greatest good, is the greatest harm. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Fortune has rarely condescended to be the companion of genius. [ Isaac Disraeli ]

Genius is nothing else than a sovereign capacity for patience. [ Buffon ]

An uncommon degree of imagination constitutes poetical genius. [ Dugald Stewart ]

Nature is the master of talent; genius is the master of nature. [ J. G. Holland ]

Society develops wit, but its contemplation alone forms genius. [ Mme. de Stael ]

Government is an art above the attainment of an ordinary genius. [ South ]

The proportion of genius to the vulgar is like one to a million. [ Lavater ]

The real men of genius were resolute workers, not idle dreamers. [ G. H. Lewes ]

Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm. [ Benjamin Disraeli ]

You must have a genius for charity as well as for anything else. [ Thoreau ]

He is gifted with genius who knoweth much by natural inspiration. [ Pindar ]

Genius may be almost defined as the faculty of acquiring poverty. [ Whipple ]

No communication or gift can exhaust genius or impoverish charity. [ Lavater ]

He who would acquire fame must not show himself afraid of censure.
The dread of censure is the death of genius. [ Simms ]

Montesquieu had the style of a genius; Buffon, the genius of style. [ Baron Grimm ]

Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities. [ Madame de Stael ]

Genius is the transcendent capacity of taking trouble first of all. [ Carlyle ]

Intelligence is to genius as the whole is in proportion to its part. [ De La Bruyere ]

Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over-influence. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Mistaking taste for genius is the rock on which thousands have split. [ J. T. Headley ]

Libraries collect the works of genius of every language and every age. [ G. Bancroft ]

Genius grafted on womanhood is like to overgrow it and break its stem. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]

Women have a genius for love; men can only learn the art indifferently. [ De Maistre ]

Heaven and earth, advantages and obstacles, conspire to educate genius. [ Fuseli ]

Every genius is defended from approach by quantities of unavailableness. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

The genius, wit, and spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs. [ Bacon ]

Genius should be the child of genius, and every child should be inspired. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius. [ Carlyle ]

Taste consists in the power of judging; genius, in the power of executing. [ Blair ]

The first and last thing which is required of genius is the love of truth. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Attention makes the genius; all learning, fancy, and science depend on it. [ Willmott ]

I know no such thing as genius - genius is nothing but labor and diligence. [ Hogarth ]

Many men of genius must arise before a particular man of genius can appear. [ Isaac Disraeli ]

Genius of a kind is necessary to make a fortune, and especially a large one. [ La Bruyère ]

Genius - the free and harmonious play of all the faculties of a human being. [ Alcott ]

Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world, alters the world. [ Emerson ]

Genius is lonely without the surrounding presence of a people to inspire it. [ T. W. Higginson ]

Ambition persevers in the desire of acquiring power, genius flags of itself. [ Madame De Stael ]

Genius makes its observations in shorthand; talent writes them out at length. [ Bovee ]

Where power is absent we may find the robe of genius, but we miss the throne. [ Landor ]

Genius is nothing more than the effort of the idea to assume a definite form. [ Fichte ]

The scorn of genius is the most arrogant and the most boundless of all scorn. [ Ouida ]

Genius may at times want the spur, but it stands as often in need of the curb. [ Longinus ]

Some people have a perfect genius for doing nothing, and doing it assiduously. [ Haliburton ]

Conversation enriches the understanding; but solitude is the school of genius. [ Gibbon ]

Genius of the highest kind implies an unusual intensity of the modifying power. [ Coleridge ]

Genius unexerted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks. [ Beecher ]

Genius is the gold in the mine; talent is the miner who works and brings it out. [ Lady Blessington ]

Philosophy becomes poetry, and science imagination, in the enthusiasm of genius. [ Isaac Disraeli ]

A genius is one who is endowed with an excess of nervous energy and sensibility. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]

Genius does not need a special language; it newly uses whatever tongue it finds. [ Stedman ]

Genius is always impatient of its harness; its wild blood makes it hard to train. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]

Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is. [ Lowell ]

No power of genius has ever yet had the smallest success in explaining existence. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

To make the common marvellous, as if it were a revelation, is the test of genius. [ Lowell ]

A truly great genius will be the first to prescribe limits for its own exertions. [ Brougham ]

To be a good poet and painter genius is required, and this cannot be communicated. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Talent is some one faculty unusually developed; genius commands all the faculties. [ F. H. Hedge ]

The gifts of genius are far greater than the givers themselves venture to suppose. [ Moses Harvey ]

Genius is the highest type of reason, talent the highest type of the understanding. [ Hickok ]

Genius, the Pythian of the beautiful, leaves its large truths a riddle to the dull. [ Bulwer Lytton ]

Will no superior genius snatch the quill, and save me on the brink from writing ill? [ Young ]

The path of genius is not less obstructed with disappointment than that of ambition. [ Voltaire ]

Genius is the power of carrying the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood. [ Coleridge ]

Every genius has most power in his own language, and every heart in its own religion. [ Jean Paul ]

That genius is feeble which cannot hold its own before the masterpieces of the world. [ T. W. Higginson ]

Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it. [ Mme. de Stael ]

Heaven has refused genius to woman, in order to concentrate all the fire in her heart. [ Rivarol ]

The miracles of genius always rest on profound convictions which refuse to be analyzed. [ Emerson ]

The belly (i.e. hunger or necessity) is the teacher of arts and the bestower of genius. [ Pers ]

Genius is subject to the same laws which regulate the production of cotton and molasses. [ Macaulay ]

We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates. [ Emerson ]

Genius only commands recognition when it has created the taste which is to appreciate it. [ Froude ]

Genius easily hews out its figure from the block, but the sleepless chisel gives it life. [ Willmott ]

There is genius as well in virtue as in intellect. It is the doctrine of faith over works. [ Emerson ]

Two sorts of writers possess genius; those who think, and those who cause others to think. [ J. Roux ]

Education may work wonders as well in warping the genius of individuals as in seconding it. [ A. Bronson Alcott ]

Understanding is a mechanically, wit a chemically, and genius an organically, acting spirit. [ French Schlegel ]

The charm of the best courages is that they are inventions, inspirations, flashes of genius. [ Emerson ]

Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly, grows unconsciously into genius. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

The genius of life is friendly to the noble, and, in the dark, brings them friends from far. [ Emerson ]

Genius cannot escape the taint of its time more than a child the influence of its begetting. [ Ouida ]

A man of genius is inexhaustible only in proportion as he is always renourishing his genius. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

It is the privilege of genius that to it life never grows common-place, as to the rest of us. [ Lowell ]

Genius has its fatality. Must we not see in its works a manifestation of the will of Providence? [ Arsene Houssaye ]

The greatest genius is never so great as when it is chastised and subdued by the highest reason. [ Colton ]

The true characteristic of genius - without despising rules, it knows when and how to break them. [ Channing ]

Genius ever stands with nature in solemn union, and what the one foretells the other will fulfil. [ Friedrich Schiller ]

Of the three requisitions of genius, the first is soul, and the second, soul, and the third, soul. [ E. P. Whipple ]

Refined taste forms a good critic; but genius is further necessary to form the poet or the orator. [ Blair ]

Never think that God's delays are God's denials. Hold on! hold fast! hold out! Patience is genius. [ Count de Buffon ]

Music is not a science any more than poetry is. It is a sublime instinct, like genius of all kinds. [ Ouida ]

There is hardly a more common error than that of taking the man who has but one talent for a genius. [ Arthur Helps ]

Genius, like a torch, shines less in the broad daylight of the present than in the night of the past. [ J. Petit-Senn ]

A nation does wisely, if not well, in starving her men of genius. Fatten them, and they are done for. [ Charles Buxton ]

Genius is inconsiderate, self-relying, and, like unconscious beauty, without any intention to please. [ I. M. Wise ]

This is the method of genius, to ripen fruit for the crowd by those rays of whose heat they complain. [ Margaret Fuller ]

Commonsense has given to words their ordinary signification, and commonsense is the genius of mankind. [ Guizot ]

Milton was a genius that could cut a colossus from a rock, but could not carve heads upon cherrystones. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Mediocrity is less sensitive than genius, and therefore suffers less under nearly any possible exigency. [ William Winter ]

Death is a silent, peaceful genius, who rocks our second childhood to sleep in the cradle of the coffin. [ Chatfield ]

We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age. [ Macaulay ]

The test or measure of poetic genius is to read the poetry of affairs, to fuse the circumstance of today. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Good out of good is what every man of intellect can fashion, but it takes genius to evoke good out of bad. [ Friedrich Schiller ]

All that is enviable is not bought: love, genius, beauty, are divine gifts that the richest cannot acquire. [ Mme. Louise Colet ]

Genius does not care much for a set of explicit regulations, but that does not mean that genius is lawless. [ Charles H. Parkhurst ]

You must say and do nothing against the bent of your genius, (i.e. in default of the necessary inspiration.) [ Horace ]

Talent wears well, genius wears itself out; talent drives a brougham in fact; genius, a sun-chariot in fancy. [ Ouida ]

Genius, in one respect, is like gold - numbers of persons are constantly writing about both, who have neither. [ Colton ]

Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labor in it, but they labor in it because they excel. [ Hazlitt ]

No reports are more readily believed than those which disparage genius and soothe envy of conscious mediocrity. [ Macaulay ]

Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]

Some have the temperament and tastes of genius, without its creative power. They feel acutely, but express tamely. [ Bulwer ]

It is in the heart that God has placed the genius of women, because the works of this genius are all works of love. [ Lamartine ]

The perfection of conversational intercourse is when the breeding of high life is animated by the fervor of genius. [ Leigh Hunt ]

It is strange that all great men should have some little grain of madness mingled with whatever genius they possess. [ Moliere ]

It is quite as much of a trade to make a book as to make a clock. It requires more than mere genius to be an author. [ Bruyere ]

There is none but he whose being I do fear; and, under him, my genius is rebuked, as it is said Antony's was by Caesar. [ William Shakespeare ]

Men of genius are often dull and inert in society, as the blazing meteor when it descends to the earth is only a stone. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

Many a genius has been slow of growth. Oaks that flourish for a thousand years do not spring up into beauty like a reed. [ George Henry Lewes ]

Genius in poverty is never feared, because Nature, though liberal in her gifts in one instance, is forgetful in another. [ B. R. Haydon ]

Genius inspires this thirst for fame: there is no blessing undesired by those to whom Heaven gave the means of winning it. [ Mme. de Stael ]

Character shows itself apart from genius as a special thing. The first point of measurement of any man is that of quality. [ T. W. Higginson ]

When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. [ Swift ]

With the offspring of genius, the law of parturition reversed; the throes are in the conception, the pleasure in the birth. [ Colton ]

To think and to feel, constitute the two grand divisions of men of genius - the men of reasoning and the men of imagination. [ Isaac Disraeli ]

Many have genius, but, wanting art, are forever dumb. The two must go together to form the great poet, painter, or sculptor. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason and imagination, rarely or never. [ Coleridge ]

A man of genius may sometimes suffer a miserable sterility; but at other times he will feel himself the magician of thought. [ John Foster ]

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men - that is genius. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

It is the habit of party in England to ask the alliance of a man of genius, but to follow the guidance of a man of character. [ Lord John Russell ]

The greatest geniuses have always attributed everything to God, as if conscious of being possessed of a spark of His divinity. [ B. R. Haydon ]

Genius is rarely found without some mixture of eccentricity, as the strength of spirit is proved by the bubbles on its surface. [ Mrs. Balfour ]

There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them. [ Swift ]

The highest genius never flowers in satire, but culminates in sympathy with that which is best in human nature, and appeals to it. [ Chapin ]

Humor is one of the elements of genius - admirable as an adjunct; but as soon as it becomes dominant, only a surrogate for genius. [ Goethe ]

Latent genius is but a presumption. Everything that can be, is bound to come into being, and what never comes into being is nothing. [ Amiel ]

Men of strong affections are jealous of their own genius. They fear lest they should be loved for a quality, and not for themselves. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

Unpretending mediocrity is good, and genius is glorious; but the weak flavor of genius in a person essentially common is detestable. [ Holmes ]

There are cloudy days for the mind as well as for the world, and the man who has the most genius is twenty times a day in the clouds. [ Beaumelle ]

Commonsense is only a modification of talent. Genius is an exaltation of it: the difference is, therefore, in the degree, not nature. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

That Mirabeau understood how to act with others, and by others--this was his genius, this was his originality, this was his greatness. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

The finest flowers of genius have grown in an atmosphere where those of Nature are prone to droop, and difficult to bring to maturity. [ Dr. Guthrie ]

Literature has her quacks no less than medicine: those who have erudition without genius, and those who have volubility without depth. [ Colton ]

Education, however indispensable in a cultivated age, produces nothing on the side of genius. When education ends, genius often begins. [ Isaac Disraeli ]

Genius is always a surprise, but it is born with great advantages when the stock from which it springs has been long under cultivation. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]

Obey thy genius, for a minister it is unto the throne of fate. Draw to thy soul, and centralize the rays which are ground of the Divinity. [ Bailey ]

The discovery of truth by slow, progressive meditation is talent. Intuition of the truth, not preceded by perceptible meditation, is genius. [ Lavater ]

To be endowed with strength by nature, to be actuated by the powers of the mind, and to have a certain spirit almost divine infused into you. [ Cicero ]

What an ornament and safeguard is humor! Far better than wit for a poet and writer. It is a genius itself, and so defends from the insanities. [ Walter Scott ]

A friendship formed in childhood, in youth, - by happy accident at any stage of rising manhood becomes the genius that rules the rest of life. [ A. Bronson Alcott ]

Good taste cannot supply the place of genius in literature, for the best proof of taste, when there is no genius, would be not to write at all. [ Mme. de Staël ]

Every age might perhaps produce one or two geniuses, if they were not sunk under the censure and obloquy of plodding, servile, imitating pedants. [ Swift ]

The very thrills of genius are disorganizing. The body is never quite acclimated to its atmosphere, but how often succumbs and goes into a decline. [ Henry D. Thoreau ]

Genius is to other gifts what the carbuncle is to the precious stones. It sends forth its own light, whereas other stones only reflect borrowed light. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]

So far from genius discarding law, rather is it the supreme joy of genius to reenact the eternal and unwritten law in the chamber of its own intellect. [ Charles H. Parkhurst ]

The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtle, without being at all acute; hence there is so much humor and so little wit in their literature. [ Coleridge ]

Men of humor are always in some degree men of genius; wits are rarely so, although a man of genius may, amongst other gifts, possess wit, as Shakespeare. [ Coleridge ]

Men of humour are always in some degree men of genius; wits are rarely so, although a man of genius may, amongst other gifts, possess wit, as Shakespeare. [ Coleridge ]

The book that will make its way in the world, that will remain, or survive, as an imperishable monument, or memorial, must have the stamp of genius upon it. [ Martial ]

Men of genius are often considered superstitious, but the fact is, the fineness of their nerve renders them more alive to the supernatural than ordinary men. [ B. R. Haydon ]

Genius is only as rich as it is generous. If it hoards, it impoverishes itself. What the banker sighs for, the meanest clown may have leisure and a quiet mind. [ Henry D. Thoreau ]

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. [ Lowell ]

It is generally admitted, and very frequently proved, that virtue and genius, and all the natural good qualities which men possess, are derived from their mothers. [ T. Hook ]

The mother of useful arts is necessity; that of the fine arts is luxury. For father, the former has intellect; the latter, genius, which itself is a kind of luxury. [ Schopenhauer ]

Books are the legacies that genius leaves to mankind, to be delivered down from generation to generation, as presents to the posterity of those that are yet unborn. [ Addison ]

The all importance of clothes has sprung up in the intellect of the dandy without effort, like an instinct of genius; he is inspired with clothes, a poet of clothes. [ Carlyle ]

Who in the same given time can produce more than many others, has vigor; who can produce more and better, has talents; who can produce what none else can, has genius. [ Lavater ]

Genius does not seem to derive any great support from syllogisms. Its carriage is free; its manner has a touch of inspiration. We see it come, but we never see it walk. [ Count de Maistre ]

Eccentricity is not a proof of genius, and even an artist should remember that originality consists not only in doing things differently, but also in doing things better. [ Stedman ]

Rising genius always shoots forth its rays from among clouds and vapors, but these will gradually roll away and disappear as it ascends to its steady and meridian lustre. [ Washington Irving ]

Style is indeed the valet of genius, and an able one too; but as the true gentleman will appear, even in rags, so true genius will shine, even through the coarsest style. [ Colton ]

The drafts which true genius draws upon posterity, although they may not always be honored so soon as they are due, are sure to be paid with compound interest in the end. [ Colton ]

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him. [ Emerson ]

The effusions of genius are entitled to admiration rather than applause, as they are chiefly the effect of natural endowment, and sometimes appear to be almost involuntary. [ W. B. Clulow ]

As what we call genius arises out of the disproportionate power and size of a certain faculty, so the great difficulty lies in harmonizing with it the rest of the character. [ Mrs. Jameson ]

A lady of genius will give a genteel air to her whole dress by a well-fancied suit of knots, as a judicious writer gives a spirit to a whole sentence by a single expression. [ Gay ]

Genius, that power which constitutes a poet; that quality without which judgment is cold and knowledge is inert: that energy which collects, combines, amplifies and animates. [ Johnson ]

Genius grafted on womanhood is like to overgrow it and break its stem, as you may see a grafted fruit-tree spreading over the stock which cannot keep pace with its evolutions. [ Holmes ]

Genius, without religion, is only a lamp on the outer gate of a palace. It may serve to cast a gleam of light on those that are without while the inhabitant sits in. darkness. [ Hannah More ]

Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the company of vulgar people, because they have a power of looking at such persons as objects of amusement of another race altogether. [ Coleridge ]

Genius is allied to a warm and inflammable constitution; delicacy of taste, to calmness and sedateness. Hence it is common to find genius in one who is a prey to every passion. [ Lord Karnes ]

But the sublime, when it is introduced at a seasonable moment, has often carried all before it with the rapidity of lightning, and shown at a glance the mighty power of genius. [ Longinus ]

Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellences which are out of the reach of the rules of art: a power which no precepts can teach, and which no industry can acquire. [ Sir J. Reynolds ]

It is good sense applied with diligence to what was at first a mere accident, and which by great application grew to be called, by the generality of mankind, a particular genius. [ Johnson ]

Men of great learning or genius are too full to be exact, and therefore choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them. [ Spectator ]

There is scarce any man who cannot persuade himself of his own merit. Has he commonsense, he prefers it to genius; has he some diminutive virtues, he prefers them to great talents. [ Sewall ]

The exhaustion of taste, genius, and splendor upon its fables and ceremonies, even to our times, constitute the ancient paganism a marvel of all that was attractive and magnificent. [ R. W. Hamilton ]

The effusions of genius, or rather the manifestations of what is called talent, are often the effects of distempered nerves and complexional spleen, as pearls are morbid secretions. [ Robert Walsh ]

This is the highest miracle of genius, that things which are not should be as though they were, that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another. [ Macaulay ]

Genius never grows old - young today, mature yesterday, vigorous tomorrow, always immortal. It is peculiar to no sex or condition, and is the divine gift to woman no less than to man. [ Juan Lewis ]

She is not a brilliant woman; she is not even an intellectual one; but there is such a thing as a genius for affection, and she has it. It has been good for her husband that he married her. [ Helen Hunt ]

We declare to you that the earth has exhausted its contingent of master spirits. Now for decadence and general closing. We must make up our minds to it. We shall have no more men of genius. [ Victor Hugo ]

It is interesting to notice how some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage, and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles. [ Washington Irving ]

Was genius ever ungrateful? Mere talents are dry leaves, tossed up and down by gusts of passion, and scattered and swept away; but Genius lies on the bosom of Memory, and Gratitude at her feet. [ Landor ]

Genius is nothing more than our common faculties refined to a greater intensity. There are no astonishing ways of doing astonishing things. All astonishing things are done by ordinary materials. [ B. R. Haydon ]

Genius invents fine manners, which the baron and the baroness copy very fast, and, by the advantage of a palace, better the instruction. They stereotype the lesson they have learned into a mode. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

The light of genius is sometimes so resplendent as to make a man walk through life amid glory and acclamation; but it burns very dimly and low when carried into the valley of the shadow of death. [ Mountford ]

As diamond cuts diamond, and one hone smooths a second, all the parts of intellect are whetstones to each other; and genius, which is but the result of their mutual sharpening, is character, too. [ C. A. Bartol ]

Perhaps, if I am very lucky, the feeble efforts of my lifetime will someday be noticed, and maybe, in some small way, they will be acknowledged as the greatest works of genius ever created by Man. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

The light of genius never sets, but sheds itself upon other faces, in different hues of splendor. Homer glows in the softened beauty of Virgil, and Spenser revives in the decorated learning of Gray. [ Willmott ]

All the means of action, the shapeless masses - the materials - lie everywhere about us. What we need is the celestial fire to change the flint into transparent crystal, bright and clear. That fire is genius! [ Longfellow ]

Genius is intensity of life; an overflowing vitality which floods and fertilizes a continent or a hemisphere of being; which makes a nature many-sided and whole, while most men remain partial and fragmentary. [ Hamilton W. Mabie ]

Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm; it is the real allegory of the tale of Orpheus; it moves stones, it charms brutes. Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it. [ Bulwer ]

Fiction is no longer a mere amusement; but transcendent genius, accommodating itself to the character of the age, has seized upon this province of literature, and turned fiction from a toy into a mighty engine. [ Channing ]

Humour has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius. He who wants it, be his other gifts what they may, has only half a mind; an eye for what is above him, not for what is about him or below him. [ Carlyle ]

The art of navigation is one of the greatest achievements of human genius; man with its aid obtains a knowledge of the globe he inhabits, opens communications with, and extends his field of operations to all its parts. [ A. Brisbane ]

There are two kinds of genius. The first and highest may be said to speak out of the eternal to the present, and must compel its age to understand it; the second understands its age, and tells it what it wishes to be told. [ Lowell ]

The productions of a great genius, with many lapses and inadvertences, are infinitely preferable to the works of an inferior kind of author which are scrupulously exact, and conformable to all the rules of correct writing. [ Addison ]

Fame often rests at first upon something accidental, and often, too, is swept away, or for a time removed; but neither genius nor glory is conferred at once, nor do they glimmer and fall, like drops in a grotto, at a shout. [ Landor ]

Men of the greatest genius are not always the most prodigal of their encomiums. But then it is when their range of power is confined, and they have in fact little perception, except of their own particular kind of excellence. [ Hazlitt ]

The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds; and instead of vines and olives for the pleasure and use of man, produces to its slothful owner the most abundant crop of poisons. [ Hume ]

Genius, with all its pride in its own strength, is but a dependent quality, and cannot put forth its whole powers nor claim all its honors without an amount of aid from the talents and labors of others which it is difficult to calculate. [ Bryant ]

Genius is that power of man which by its deeds and actions gives laws and rules; and it does not, as used to be thought, manifest itself only by over-stepping existing laws, breaking established rules, and declaring itself above all restraint. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Oddities and singularities of behavior may attend genius; when they do, they are its misfortunes and its blemishes. The man of true genius will be ashamed of them; at least he will never affect to distinguish himself by whimsical peculiarities. [ S. W. Temple ]

Genius, indeed, melts many ages into one, and thus effects something permanent, yet still with a similarity of office to that of the more ephemeral writer. A work of genius is but the newspaper of a century, or perchance of a hundred centuries. [ Hawthorne ]

I had fifteen years' apprenticeship on the press of New York, writing editorials upon every conceivable subject, often at a few minutes notice, acquiring in this way rapid thought and rapid expression. ... The proof of genius lies in continuity. [ Amelia E. Barr, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]

Beauty is a form of Genius - is higher indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. People say sometimes that Beauty is only superficial, but at least it is not so superficial as thought. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]

Perfect works are rare, because they must be produced at the happy moment when taste and genius unite: and this rare conjunction, like that of certain planets, appears to occur only after the revolution of several cycles, and only lasts for an instant. [ Chateaubriand ]

The golden hour of invention must terminate like other hours; and when the man of genius returns to the cares, the duties, the vexations, and the amusements of life, his companions behold him as one of themselves, - the creature of habits and infirmities. [ Isaac Disraeli ]

Genius has privileges of its own; it selects an orbit for itself; and be this never so eccentric, if it is indeed a celestial orbit, we mere star-gazers must at last compose ourselves, must cease to cavil at it, and begin to observe it and calculate its laws. [ Carlyle ]

High original genius is always ridiculed on its first appearance; most of all by those who have won themselves the highest reputation in working on the established lines. Genius only commands recognition when it has created the taste which is to appreciate it. [ Froude ]

Some very dull and sad people have genius though the world may not count it as such; a genius for love, or for patience, or for prayer, maybe. We know the divine spark is here and there in the world: who shall say under what manifestations, or humble disguise! [ Anne Isabella Thackeray ]

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. [ La Bruyere ]

Genius is not a single power, but a combination of great powers. It reasons, but it is not reasoning; it judges, but it is not judgment: it imagines, but it is not imagination; it feels deeply and fiercely, but it is not passion. It is neither, because it is all. [ Whipple ]

Ask men of genius how much they owe to their mothers, and you will find that they attribute almost all to them and their influence; and if we could only guage the mental capacity of the wives of great men, we might perhaps learn why genius is so seldom hereditary. [ Lord Kames ]

The wild force of genius has often been fated by Nature to be finally overcome by quiet strength. The volcano sends up its red bolt with terrific force, as if it would strike the stars; but the calm, resistless hand of gravitation seizes it and brings it to the earth. [ Bayne ]

Enthusiasm is that secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the production of genius, throwing the reader of a book, or the spectator of a statue, into the very ideal presence whence these works have really originated. A great work always leaves us in a state of musing. [ Isaac Disraeli ]

Art is a jealous mistress, and, if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture, or philosophy, he makes a bad husband, and an ill provider, and should be wise in season, and not fetter himself with duties which will imbitter his days, and spoil him for his proper work. [ Emerson ]

Extemporaneous and oral harangues will always have this advantage over those that are read from a manuscript: every burst of eloquence or spark of genius they may contain, however studied they may have been beforehand, will appear to the audience to be the effect of the sudden inspiration of talent. [ Colton ]

Women have the genius of charity. A man gives but his gold, a woman adds to it her sympathy. A small sum in the hands of a woman does more good than a hundred times as much in the hands of a man. Feminine charity renews every day the miracle of Christ feeding a multitude with a few loaves and fishes. [ E. Legouve ]

From numberless books the fluttering reader, idle and inconstant, bears away the bloom that only clings to the outer leaf; but genius has its nectaries, delicate glands, and secrecies of sweetness, and upon these the thoughtful mind must settle in its labor, before the choice perfume of fancy and wisdom is drawn forth. [ Willmott ]

The very greatest genius, after all, is not the greatest thing in the world, any more than the greatest city in the world is the country or the sky. It is the concentration of some of its greatest powers, but it is not the greatest diffusion of its might. It is not the habit of its success, the stability of its sereneness. [ Leigh Hunt ]

As well might a lovely woman look daily in her mirror, yet not be aware of her beauty, as a great soul be unconscious of the powers with which Heaven has gifted him; not so much for himself, as to enlighten others - a messenger from God Himself, with a high and glorious mission to perform. Woe unto him who abuses that mission! [ Chambers ]

Genius, without work, is certainly a dumb oracle; and it is unquestionably true that the men of the highest genius have invariably been found to be amongst the most plodding, hardworking, and intent men - their chief characteristic apparently consisting simply in their power of laboring more intensely and effectively than others. [ Samuel Smiles ]

What we call genius may, perhaps, in more strict propriety, be described as the spirit of discovery. Genius is the very eye of intellect and the wing of thought. It is always in advance of its time. It is the pioneer for the generation which it precedes. For this reason it is called a seer, and hence its songs have been prophecies. [ Simms ]

A time will come when the science of destruction shall bend before the arts of peace; when the genius which multiplies our powers, which creates new products, which diffuses comfort and happiness among the great mass of the people, shall occupy in the general estimation of mankind that rank which reason and commonsense now assign to it. [ Arago ]

Neither can we admit that definition of genius that some would propose - a power to accomplish all that we undertake; for we might multiply examples to prove that this definition of genius contains more than the thing defined. Cicero failed in poetry. Pope in painting. Addison in oratory; yet it would be harsh to deny genius to these men. [ Colton ]

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. It is the lapidary that gives value to the diamond, which the peasant has dug up without knowing its worth. [ Abbe Raynal ]

A book becomes a mirror, with the author's face shining over it. Talent only gives an imperfect image, - the broken glimmer of a countenance. But the features of genius remain unruffled. Time guards the shadow. Beauty, the spiritual Venus, - whose children are the Tassos, the Spensers, the Bacons, - breathes the magic of her love, and fixes the face forever. [ Willmott ]

Cheeriness is a thing to be more profoundly grateful for than all that genius ever inspired or talent ever accomplished. Next best to natural, spontaneous cheeriness is deliberate, intended and persistent cheeriness, which we can create, can cultivate and can so foster and cherish that after a few years the world will never suspect that it was not an hereditary gift. [ Helen Hunt Jackson ]

All are to be men of genius in their degree, - rivulets or rivers, it does not matter, so that the souls be clear and pure; not dead walls encompassing dead heaps of things, known and numbered, but running waters in the sweet wilderness of things unnumbered and unknown, conscious only of the living banks, on which they partly refresh and partly reflect the flowers, and so pass on. [ Ruskin ]

There is nothing so remote from vanity as true genius. It is almost as natural for those who are endowed with the highest powers of the human mind to produce the miracles of art, as for other men to breathe or move. Correggio, who is said to have produced some of his divinest works almost without having seen a picture, probably did not know that he had done anything extraordinary. [ Hazlitt ]

When the great Kepler had at length discovered the harmonic laws that regulate the motions of the heavenly bodies, he exclaimed: Whether my discoveries will be read by posterity or by my contemporaries is a matter that concerns them more than me. I may well be contented to wait one century for a reader, when God Himself, during so many thousand years, has waited for an observer like myself. [ Macaulay ]

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them. It depends on the mood of the man, whether he shall see the sunset or the fine poem. There are always sunsets, and there is always genius; but only a few hours so serene that we can relish nature or criticism. The more or less depends on structure or temperament. Temperament is the iron wire on which the beads are strung. Of what use is fortune or talent to a cold and defective nature? [ Emerson ]

The whole difference between a man of genius and other men, it has been said a thousand times, and most truly, is that the first remains in great part a child, seeing with the large eyes of children, in perpetual wonder, not conscious of much knowledge - conscious, rather, of infinite ignorance, and yet infinite power; a fountain of eternal admiration, delight, and creative force within him meeting the ocean of visible and governable things around him. [ Ruskin ]

In the hands of genius, the driest stick becomes an Aaron's rod, and buds and blossoms out in poetry. Is he a Burns? the sight of a mountain daisy unseals the fountains of his nature, and he embalms the bonny gem in the beauty of his spirit. Is he a Wordsworth? at his touch all nature is instinct with feeling; the spirit of beauty springs up in the footsteps of his going, and the darkest, nakedest grave becomes a sunlit bank empurpled with blossoms of life. [ H. N. Hudson ]

Among the smaller duties of life, I hardly know any one more important than that of not praising where praise is not due. Reputation is one of the prizes for which men contend: it is, as Mr. Burke calls it, the cheap defense and ornament of nations. It produces more labor and more talent than twice the wealth of a country could ever rear up. It is the coin of genius, and it is the imperious duty of every man to bestow it with the most scrupulous justice and the wisest economy. [ Sydney Smith ]

The drama is not a mere copy of nature, not a facsimile. It is the free running hand of genius, under the impression of its liveliest wit or most passionate impulses, a thousand times adorning or feeling all as it goes; and you must read it, as the healthy instinct of audiences almost always does, if the critics will let them alone, with a grain of allowance, and a tendency to go away with as much of it for use as is necessary, and the rest for the luxury of laughter, pity, or poetical admiration. [ Leigh Hunt ]

Nature seems to delight in disappointing the assiduities of art, with which it would rear dulness to maturity, and to glory in the vigor and luxuriance of her chance productions. She scatters the seeds of genius to the winds, and though some may perish among the stony places of the world, and some may be choked by the thorns and brambles of early adversity, yet others will now and then strike root even in the clefts of the rock, struggle bravely up into sunshine, and spread over their sterile birthplace all the beauties of vegetation. [ Washington Irving ]

Gentleness in the gait is what simplicity is in the dress. Violent gesture or quick movement inspires involuntary disrespect. One looks for a moment at a cascade; but one sits for hours, lost in thought, and gazing upon the still water of a lake. A deliberate gale, gentle manners, and a gracious tone of voice - all of which may be acquired - give a mediocre man an immense advantage over those vastly superior to him. To be bodily tranquil, to speak little, and to digest without effort are absolutely necessary to grandeur of mind or of presence, or to proper development of genius. [ Balzac ]

No woman is a genius: women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. They represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals. There are only two kinds of women, the plain and the colored. The plain women are very useful. If you want to gain a reputation for respectability you have merely to take them down to supper. The other women are very charming. They commit one mistake, however. They paint in order to try to look young. Our grandmothers painted in order to try to talk brilliantly. Rouge and esprit used to go together. That has all gone out now. As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter she is perfectly satisfied. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]