Genius Quotes - Page 25

• The true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Communication, Thoughtful, Silence

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• The deep waters of time will flow over us: only a few men of genius will lift a head above the surface, and though doomed eventually to pass into the same silence, will fight against oblivion and for a long time hold their own.

  Seneca the Younger

  Memories, Fighting, Men

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• Profoundness, genius, spontaneity, merit, nobility, ingenuity, voice propriety, feeling, discernment, sensibility, good taste, great tone, rightness, courtliness, vivacity, boldness, style, freshness, harmony, perfection, imagination, purity, correctness. The greatest writer of all times. God's most astonishing creation.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Religious, Voice, Imagination

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• Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant intelligence.

  Henrik Tikkanen

  Crazy, Insanity, Intelligence

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• The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

  William Gilmore Simms

  Fear, Weight Loss, Criticism

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• We have three approaches at our disposal: the observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation serves to assemble the data, reflection to synthesise them and experimentation to test the results of the synthesis. The observation of nature must be assiduous, just as reflection must be profound, and experimentation accurate. These three approaches are rarely found together, which explains why creative geniuses are so rare.

  John Dewey

  Science, Reflection, Data

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• [Man] ... his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labour of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins.

  Bertrand Russell

  Inspiration, Science, Men

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays”, p.46, Booklassic

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• I know of no genius but the genius of hard work.

  J. M. W. Turner

  Hard Work, Mastery, Knows

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• The real accomplishment of modern science and technology consists in taking ordinary men, informing them narrowly and deeply and then, through appropriate organization, arranging to have their knowledge combined with that of other specialized but equally ordinary men. This dispenses with the need for genius. The resulting performance, though less inspiring, is far more predictable.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Real, Science, Technology

  1967 The New Industrial State.

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• He that would travel for the entertainment of others, should remember that the great object of remark is human life. Every Nation has something peculiar in its Manufactures, its Works of Genius, its Medicines, its Agriculture, its Customs, and its Policy. He only is a useful Traveller, who brings home something by which his country may be benefited; who procures some supply of Want, or some mitigation of Evil, which may enable his readers to compare their condition with that of others, to improve it whenever it is worse, and whenever it is better to enjoy it.

  Samuel Johnson

  Country, Home, Medicine

  "The Idler".

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• A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Success, Motivation, Men

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• Genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.

  Herman Melville

  Running, Hands, Circles

  "Hawthorne and His Mosses" (1850)

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• Consolation for those moments when you can't tell whether you're the divinest genius or the greatest fool in the world.

  Virginia Woolf

  World, Fool, Moments

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• The geniuses have created, but they were less: the saints have been, but they created little...A twofold tragedy of creativeness reveals the truth that there has not yet been in our world a religious epoch of creativity.

  Nikolai Berdyaev

  Religious, Creativity, Our World

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• The imagination of the genius vastly surpasses his intellect; the intellect of the academic vastly surpasses his imagination

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Imagination, Academic, Intellect

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2010). “The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms”, p.77, Random House

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• That which we call character is a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. It is conceived of as a certain undemonstrable force, a familiar or genius, by whose impulses the man is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Character, Mean, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.134, Graphic Arts Books

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• A host is like a general: calamities often reveal his genius.

  Horace

  Host, Calamity

  "Satires". Book by Horace, Book II, satire viii, lines 73 - 74, c. 35 BC, 30 BC.

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• Genius is intuition on fire.

  Holbrook Jackson

  Fire, Intuition

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• A genius is always on duty; even his dreams are tax deductible.

  Edward Abbey

  Dream, Duty, Taxes

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.30, RosettaBooks

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• Commerce changes entirely the fate and genius of nations, by communicating arts and opinions, circulating money, and introducing the materials of luxury; she first opens and polishes the mind, then corrupts and enervates both that and the body.

  Thomas Gray

  Fate, Commerce, Nations

  "The Works of Thomas Gray: Containing His Poems and Correspondence, with Memoirs of His Life and Writings".

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• Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Heart, Men, Hands

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.118, Penguin

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• The voice of our age seems by no means favorable to art, at all events to that kind of art to which my inquiry is directed. The course of events has given a direction to the genius of the time that threatens to remove it continually further from the ideal of art. For art has to leave reality, it has to raise itself bodily above necessity and neediness; for art is the daughter of freedom, and it requires its prescriptions and rules to be furnished by the necessity of spirits and not by that of matter.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Daughter, Art, Mean

  Friedrich Schiller (2015). “The Works of Frederick Schiller: Top Classic of German”, p.3324, 谷月社

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• Genius is the ability to see the self-evident where the rest of the world turns blind.

  Kedar Joshi

  Self, World, Blind

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• Genius is answerable only to itself; it is the sole judge of the means, since it alone knows the end; thus genius must consider itself as above the law, for it is the task of genius to remake the law; moreover the man who frees himself from his time and place may take everything, hazard everything, for everything is his by right.

  Honore de Balzac

  Mean, Men, Law

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• Adversity is wont to reveal genius, prosperity to hide it.

  Horace

  Inspirational, Adversity, Prosperity

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