Geniality Quotes

• True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.

  Winston Churchill

  Decision, Genius, Information

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• Genius is present in every age, but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it flows forth.

  Denis Diderot

  Men, Age, Genius

  Denis Diderot (1966). “Selected Writings”, New York : Macmillan

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• Everyone is a genius at least once a year.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Years, Genius, Original Ideas

  "Aphorisms". Book by Georg C. Lichtenberg, 1779 - 1788.

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• The inborn geniality of some people amounts to genius.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  People, Genius, Cheerfulness

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• Nature avenges herself speedily on the hard pedantry that would chain her waves. She is no literalist. Every thing must be taken genially, and we must be at the top of our condition, to understand any thing rightly.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Nature, Taken, Knowledge

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1588, Delphi Classics

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• No performance is worth loss of geniality. 'Tis a cruel price we pay for certain fancy goods called fine arts and philosophy.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Kindness, Philosophy

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.366

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• [Thomas Henry] Huxley is a very genial, comfortable being-yet with none of the noisy and windy geniality of some folks here, whom you find with their backs turned when you are responding to the remarks that they have made you.

  Henry James

  Science, Noise, Biographies

  Henry James, Jack Kerouac (1999). “Henry James: A Life in Letters”, Viking Press

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• The old fashioned family physician and general practitioner ... was a splendid figure and useful person in his day; but he was badly trained, he was often ignorant, he made many mistakes, for one cannot by force of character and geniality of person make a diagnosis of appendicitis, or recognize streptococcus infection.

  Charles Loomis Dana

  Mistake, Character, Science

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• I am not [...] asserting that humans are either genial or aggressive by inborn biological necessity. Obviously, both kindness and violence lie within the bounds of our nature because we perpetrate both, in spades. I only advance a structural claim that social stability rules nearly all the time and must be based on an overwhelmingly predominant (but tragically ignored) frequency of genial acts, and that geniality is therefore our usual and preferred response nearly all the time. [...] [T]he center of human nature is rooted in ten thousand ordinary acts of kindness that define our days.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Kindness, Lying, Usual

  "Eight Little Piggies". Book by Stephen Jay Gould, "Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness", p. 282, 1993.

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• Ernest Bevin had many of the strongest characteristics of the English race. His manliness, his common sense, his rough simplicity, sturdiness and kind heart, easy geniality and generosity, all are qualities which we who live in the southern part of this famous island regard with admiration.

  Ernest Bevin

  Heart, Islands, Race

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• Every now and then, I'll meet an escapee, someone who has broken free of self-centeredness and lit out for the territory of compassion. You've met them, too, those people who seem to emit a steady stream of, for want of a better word, love-vibes. As soon as you come within range, you feel embraced, accepted for who you are. For those of us who suspect that you rarely get something for nothing, such geniality can be discomfiting. Yet it feels so good to be around them. They stand there, radiating photons of goodwill, and despite yourself you beam back, and the world, in a twinkling, changes.

  Marc Ian Barasch

  Life, Acceptance, Compassion

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• It isn't very nice to admit, but domestic violence has its uses. So raw and unleashed, it tears away the veil of civilization that comes between us as much as it makes life possible. A poor substitute for the sort of passion we like to extol perhaps, but real love shares more in common with hatred and rage than it does with geniality or politeness.

  Lionel Shriver

  Real, Nice, Passion

  Lionel Shriver (2011). “We Need to Talk about Kevin”, p.196, Counterpoint Press

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• It is no disparagement to the garden to say it will not fence and weed itself, nor prune its own fruit trees, nor roll and cut its own lawns...It will remain a garden only if someone does all these things to it...If you want to see the difference between [the garden's] contribution and the gardener's, put the commonest weed it grows side by side with his hoes rakes, shears, and a packet of weed killer; you have put beauty, energy, and fecundity beside dead, steril things. Just so, our 'decency and common sense' show grey and deathlike beside the geniality of love.

  C. S. Lewis

  Love, Weed, Cutting

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• The extreme geniality of San Francisco's economic, intellectual and political climate makes it the most varied and challenging city in the United States.

  James A. Michener

  Cities, San Francisco, Political

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