Half talent is no talent. [ Lavater ]

Talent works, genius creates. [ Schumann ]

No talent, but yet a character. [ Heine ]

Talent should minister to genius. [ Robert Browning ]

Talent is form, genius is substance. [ Gutzkow ]

Wit is to talent as a whole to a part. [ La Bruyère ]

Talent without tact is only half talent. [ Horace Greeley ]

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

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

Where can we find talent equal to the subject? [ Juvenal, Roman Poet ]

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

Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age. [ Swift ]

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

A talent for repartee is one that increases with practice. [ J. L. Motley ]

Murder, like talent, seems occasionally to run in families. [ George Henry Lewes ]

A fool may sometimes have talent, but he never has judgment. [ La Roche ]

The two sources of all quack-talent are cunning and impudence. [ Carlyle ]

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

Strength is not energy; some authors have more muscles than talent. [ Joubert ]

Ideas are a capital that bears interest only in the hands of talent. [ Rivarol ]

Celebrity is the chastisement of merit, and the punishment of talent. [ Chamfort ]

Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do, well. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

Wisdom is the talent of buying virtuous pleasures at the cheapest rate. [ Fielding ]

A talent is perfected in solitude: a character in the stream of the world. [ Goethe ]

Every one according to his talent, and every talent according to its works. [ French Proverb ]

Talent forms itself in secret; character, in the great current of the world. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

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

The talent of making friends is not equal to the talent of doing without them. [ Alfieri ]

With ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable. [ Sir T. F. Buxton ]

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

There is no talent so pernicious as eloquence to those who have it under command. [ Addison ]

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

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

When a good man has talent, he always works morally for the salvation of the world. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

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

If the power to do hard work is not talent, it is the best possible substitute for it. [ James A. Garfield ]

Talent is nurtured in solitude; character is formed in the stormy billows of the world. [ Goethe ]

Talent is a gift which God has imparted in secret, and which we reveal without knowing it. [ Montesquieu ]

We want our friend as a man of talent, less because he has talent than because he is our friend. [ Joseph Roux ]

The tastes, affections, and sentiments are more absolutely the man than his talent or acquirements. [ Henry T. Tuckerman ]

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

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

There should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric; and pure invention is but the talent of a deceiver. [ Byron ]

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

Presence of mind, penetration, fine observation, are the sciences of women; ability to avail themselves of these is their talent. [ Rousseau ]

Persons of fine manners make behaviour the first sign of force,--behaviour, and not performance, or talent, or, much less, wealth. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

There never was a talent, even for real literature, but was primarily a talent for something infinitely better of the silent kind. [ Carlyle ]

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 ]

People are not aware of the very great force which pleasantry in company has upon all those with whom a man of that talent converses. [ Steele ]

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

Mannerism is always longing to have done, and has no true enjoyment in work. A genuine, really great talent, on the other hand, has its greatest happiness in execution. [ Goethe ]

He that gives a portion of his time and talent to the investigation of mathematical truth, will come to all other questions with a decided advantage over his opponents. [ Colton ]

Talent for literature, thou hast such a talent? Believe it not, be slow to believe it! To speak or to write, Nature did not peremptorily order thee; but to work she did. [ Carlyle ]

I hold a doctrine, to which I owe not much, indeed, but all the little I ever had, namely, that with ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable. [ Sir T. F. Buxton ]

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 ]

Gross and vulgar minds will always pay a higher respect to wealth than to talent; for wealth, although it be a far less efficient source of power than talent, happens to be far more intelligible. [ Colton ]

Called to the throne by the voice of the people, my maxim has always been: A career open to talent without distinction of birth. It is this system of equality for which the European oligarchy detests me. [ Napoleon ]

What a man does with his wealth depends upon his idea of happiness. Those who draw prizes in life are apt to spend tastelessly, if not viciously; not knowing that it requires as much talent to spend as to make. [ Whipple ]

Talent and worth are the only eternal grounds of distinction. To these the Almighty has affixed His everlasting patent of nobility. Knowledge and goodness, - these make degrees in heaven, and they must be the graduating scale of a true democracy. [ Miss Sedgwick ]

Equality is one of the most consummate scoundrels that ever crept from the brain of a political juggler - a fellow who thrusts his hand into the pocket of honest industry or enterprising talent, and squanders their hardearned profits on profligate idleness or indolent stupidity. [ Paulding ]

It is adverse to talent to be consorted and trained up with inferior minds and inferior companions, however high they may rank. The foal of the racer neither finds out his speed nor calls out his powers if pastured out with the common herd, that are destined for the collar and the yoke. [ Colton ]

It is averse to talent to be consorted and trained up with inferior minds or inferior companions, however high they may rank. The foal of the racer neither finds out his speed, nor calls out his powers, if pastured out with the common herd, that are destined for the collar and the yoke. [ Colton ]

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 ]

Talent is something, but tact is everything. It is not a seventh sense, but is the life of all the five. It is the open eye, the quick ear, the judging taste, the keen smell, and the lively touch; it is the interpreter of all riddles, the surmounter of all difficulties, the remover of all obstacles. [ W. P. Scargill ]

There are circumstances of peculiar difficulty and danger, where a mediocrity of talent is the most fatal quantum that a man can possibly possess. Had Charles the First and Louis the Sixteenth been more wise or more weak, more firm or more yielding, in either case they had both of them saved their heads. [ Colton ]

A just and reasonable modesty does not only recommend eloquence, but sets off every great talent which a man can be possessed of. It heightens all the virtues which it accompanies; like the shades of paintings, it raises and rounds every figure, and makes the colors more beautiful, though not so glowing as they would be without it. [ Addison ]

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 ]

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 ]

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 ]

Many a good intention dies from inattention. If, through carelessness or indolence, or selfishness, a good intention is not put into effect, we have lost an opportunity, demoralized ourselves, and stolen from the pile of possible good. To be born and not fed, is to perish. To launch a ship and neglect it is to lose it. To have a talent and bury it, is to be a wicked and slothful servant. For in the end we shall be judged, not alone by what we have done, but by what we could have done. [ Maltbie Babcock ]

I remember that one fateful day when Coach took me aside. I knew what was coming. You don't have to tell me, I said. I'm off the team, aren't I? Well, said Coach, you never were really ON the team. You made that uniform you're wearing out of rags and towels, and your helmet is a toy space helmet. You show up at practice and then either steal the ball and make us chase you to get it back, or you try to tackle people at inappropriate times. It was all true what he was saying. And yet, I thought something is brewing inside the head of this Coach. He sees something in me, some kind of raw talent that he can mold. But that's when I felt the handcuffs go on. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]