There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

Aristotle

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

Oscar Wilde

Since when was genius found respectable?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

It takes no genius to observe that a one-man band never gets very big.

Charles Garfield

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

Carl Sagan

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

Edgar Allan Poe

Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.

Joseph Joubert

There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.

Oscar Levant

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

Seneca

Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds.

Samuel Butler

Be you in what line of life you may, it will be amongst your misfortunes if you have not time properly to attend to pecuniary [monetary] matters. Want of attention to these matters has impeded the progress of science and of genius itself.

William Cobbett

To live for a time close to great minds is the best kind of education.

John Buchan

In the world which we know, among the different and primitive geniuses that preside over the evolution of the several species, there exists not one, excepting that of the dog, that ever gave a thought to the presence of man.

Maurice Maeterlinck

The first and last thing required of genius is the love of truth.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Beware of dissipating your powers; strive constantly to concentrate them. Genius thinks it can do whatever it sees others doing, but is sure to repent of every ill-judged outlay.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

William Hazlitt

Every man of genius sees the world at a different angle from his fellows, and there is his tragedy.

Havelock Ellis

Everyone is born with genius, but most people only keep it a few minutes.

Edgard Varese

The especial genius of women I believe to be electrical in movement, intuitive in function, spiritual in tendency.

Margaret Lee Runbeck

He was a genius - that is to say, a man who does superlatively and without obvious effort something that most people cannot do by the uttermost exertion of their abilities.

Robertson Davies

Genius is talent set on fire by courage.

Henry Van Dyke

Genius can do much, but even genius falls short of the actuality of a single human life.

Hamilton Wright Mabie

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

Marguerite Blessington

Genius is nothing but a greater aptitude for patience.

George louis Leclerc De Buffon

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.

Arthur Conan Doyle, Sr.

The genius of our institutions is democratic - baseball is a democratic game.

Al Spalding

Genius - the ability to produce fantastic amounts of equally fantastic bullshit that all makes perfect sense.

Jason Zebehazy

In every work of genius we see our own rejected thoughts.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

You would think with all the genius and the brilliance of these times, we might find a higher purpose and a better use of mind.

Jackson Browne

If there be anything that can be called genius, it consists chiefly in ability to give that attention to a subject which keeps it steadily in the mind, till we have surveyed it accurately on all sides.

Robert Quillen

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.

Elbert Hubbard

What is genius, anyway, if it isn't the ability to give an adequate response to a great challenge?

Bette Greene

Genius hath electric power which earth can never tame.

Lydia M. Child

The three indispensable of genius are: understanding, feeling, and perseverance; the three things that enrich genius are: contentment of mind, the cherishing of good thoughts, and the exercise of memory.

Robert Southey

I can't tell you if genius is hereditary, because heaven has granted me no offspring.

James Whistler

The principle mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.

Arthur Koestler

Genius is the very eye of intellect and the wing of thought; it is always in advance of its time, and is the pioneer for the generation which it precedes.

William Gilmore Simms

Genius is of no country.

Charles Churchill

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.

Aristotle

Genius is independent of situation.

Charles Churchill

Genius is eternal patience.

Michelangelo Buonarroti

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

William Gilmore Simms

The simplest of women are wonderful liars who can extricate themselves from the most difficult dilemmas with a skill bordering on genius.

Guy De Maupassant

Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than a whole one.

E. B. White

Genius is the talent of a person who is dead.

Edmond de Goncourt

Genius ... is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.

Ezra Pound

Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius.

George Bernard Shaw

I have nothing to declare but my genius.

Oscar Wilde

Genius is born--not paid.

Oscar Wilde

Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.

Fulton J. Sheen

Short of genius a rich man cannot even imagine poverty.

Charles Peguy

When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay, God is within, and your genius is within. And what need have they of light to see what you are doing?

Epictetus

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

Seneca

Genius without education is like silver in the mine.

Benjamin Franklin

He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.

Douglas Adams

What is genius but the power of expressing a new individuality?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

A genius is just a talented person who does his homework.

Thomas A. Edison

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

Jonathan Swift

No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversations as a dog does.

Christopher Morley

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius.

Josh Billings

Boldness in itself is genius.

L. Ron Hubbard

A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one. Genius is the talent of a dead man.

Carl Sandburg

Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.

Charles Bukowski

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.

Henry David Thoreau

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

Arthur Schopenhauer

True genius is always inborn and never cultivated, let alone learned.

Adolf Hitler

One of the satisfactions of a genius is his will-power and obstinacy.

Man Ray

No man can be a genius in slapshoes and a flat hat.

Buster Keaton

My own experience is that a certain kind of genius among students is best brought out in bed.

Allen Ginsberg

Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them.

Robertson Davies

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

William Gilmore Simms

He was plainly a genius.

Bill Hamilton

Genius is initiative on fire.

Holbrook Jackson

Is Tyler Allen a genius or a fool? Only time will tell.

Tom Owen

Everything I do, I feel is genius. Whether it is or it isn't.

Rufus Wainwright

There's no doubt he was in his own way a comic genius.

Nicholas Parsons

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.

Joe Theismann

He is a genius. He can handle the pressure.

Richard Steere

The only genius that's worth anything is the genius for hard work.

Kathleen Winsor

Mediocrity is self-inflicted and genius is self-bestowed.

Walter Russell

Industry is a better horse to ride than genius.

Walter Lippmann

A neurotic can perfectly well be a literary genius, but his greatest danger is always that he will not recognize when he is dull.

Louis Auchincloss

Genius . . . arises in the natural, aboriginal concern for the conscious unity of all phenomena.

Mary Austin

Bruce was a genius, conveniently born on Christmas Eve with, according to my mother, Messiah potential.

Wendy Wasserstein

A genius is one who can do anything except make a living.

Joey Lauren Adams

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

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I'm not a genius or anything close to it.

Benjamin Levy

A man possesses talent; genius possesses the man.

Isaac Stern

Dick was one of the best. That was his genius. You can't win without those people.

Don Crosby

A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

James Joyce

My time was free during the week between the two concerts [in 1895]. I met this eccentric genius whose acquaintance I kept although I saw him only seldom.

Harold Bauer

I think he's a genius.

Marty Whitman

Early school performance is not predictive either of genius or later school performance.

Michael Thompson

The genius which runs to madness is no longer genius.

Otto Weininger

Common sense is as rare as genius.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Genius and virtue are to be more often found clothed in gray than in peacock bright.

Van Wyck Brooks

Nobody in the game of football should be called a genius. A genius is somebody like Norman Einstein.

Joe Theismann

The appearance of a single great genius is more than equivalent to the birth of a hundred mediocrities.

Cesare Lombroso

She is a genius at being able to marry a form and style with beauty, and that is what the French expected at that time.

Beverly Leech

His intelligence seized on a subject, his genius embraced it, his eloquence illuminated it.

Paterculus

One of the strongest characteristics of genius is the power of lighting its own fire.

John Watson Foster

He was as close as NIU got to a true genius.

John Knapp

We are extremely gratified that the initial launch of our first feature film through Genius has been a success.

Bob Weinstein

It takes a genius to whine appealingly.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fortune has rarely condescended to be the companion of genius.

Isaac Disraeli

Nor ought a genius less than his that writ attempt translation.

John Denham

I'm probably the only guy who worked for Stengel before and after he was a genius.

Warren Spahn

The word genius isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.

Joe Theismann

Skill is fine, and genius is splendid, but the right contacts are more valuable than either.

Arthur Conan Doyle, Sr.

It's hard to determine whether the wholesale strategy is a mark of genius or desperation.

Allan Tumolillo

He [T. E. Lawrence] had a genius for backing into the limelight.

Lowell Thomas

I wouldn't say Jamie is a evil genius. I'm not sure he's evil, and I'm not sure he's a genius.

Adam Savage

Action, so to speak, is the genius of nature.

Robert Blair

Every true genius is bound to be naive.

Friedrich von Schiller

Talent works, genius creates.

Robert A. Schumann

Genius is a word too often tossed around in musical circles.

Stanley Jordan

Artistic genius is an expansion of monkey imitativeness.

W. Winwood Reade

Unless one is a genius, it is best to aim at being intelligible.

Anthony Hope

To know one's self is wisdom, but not to know one's neighbors is genius.

Minna Antrim

My evil genius Procrastination has whispered me to tarry 'til a more convenient season.

Mary Todd Lincoln

Talent does what it can, Genius does what it must.

Edward G. Bulwer lytton

He's an original genius. He's kind of blazed his own trail.

Martin Short

No one can arrive from being talented alone, work transforms talent into genius.

Anna Pavlova

It didn't take a genius to figure out what he had athletically.

Brian Foster

The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.

Ian Fleming

Genius worship is the inevitable sign of an uncreative age.

Clive Bell

Intelligence recognizes what has happened. Genius recognizes what will happen.

John Ciardi

The divine egoism hat is genius.

Mary Webb

Her Elizabeth is so genius.

Helen Mirren

In the old days one merely gawked at these unfortunates. Donahue's genius is to get them to talk.

Charles Krauthammer

Everyone knows that when it comes to designing plays, Eddie is a genius. He always comes up with the new move or the new strategy. He's amazing.

Pat O'toole

To be complex does not mean to be fragmented. This is the paradox and the genius of our Canadian civilization.

Adrienne Clarkson

It was 1 percent genius and 99 percent perspiration.

Michael Hevezi

I was intrigued by this term 'genius,' because as far as I can see it is completely useless.

Phil Grabsky

You don't have to be a political genius to sniff the smell of blood in the water.

Rich Galen

He's got the Waylon vibe, but the Shooter genius.

Jessi Colter

He's an original genius.

Martin Short

The genius of impeachment lay in the fact that it could punish the man without punishing the office.

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

Never think that God's delays are God's denials. Hold on; hold fast; hold out. Patience is genius.

Comte de Buffon

Genius is the ability to put into effect what is in your mind.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

It's a genius title. It's so stupid, it's great.

Chris Rohan

Genius is nothing but continued attention.

Claude Adrien Helvetius

I got bad starts, but we made up ground because Russell is a genius and the crew is fantastic.

Vincenzo Onorato

Man is a genius when he is dreaming.

Akira Kurosawa

Some men come by the name of genius in the same way as an insect comes by the name of centipede - not because it has a hundred feet, but because most people can't count above fourteen.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Genius is immediate, but talent takes time.

Janet Flanner

Mike is a genius. I can really see him as Keith. He's amazing when you meet him, so clever.

Roger Daltrey

There is no genius without a mixture of madness.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.

Benjamin Disraeli

What is the good of being a genius if you cannot use it as an excuse for being unemployed?

Gerald Barzan

It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.

Gertrude Stein

He does some unbelievable things. He does things I've never seen anybody else do. He has that little bit of genius.

Paul Grayson

He wasn't exactly a ball of laughs. Where did this stuff come from? I don't know. I didn't see the genius in his day-to-day personality.

Richard West

We're very bullish with the average investor being able to handle their own stock portfolio, ... You don't have to be a genius.

Adriane Berg

In Mozart and Salieri we see the contrast between the genius which does what it must and the talent which does what it can.

Maurice Baring

Origins of a Genius.

Alan Brown

We have lost a national treasure - a comic actor of real genius.

Michael Grade

An entrepreneur is a kind of genius who is born, not made.

Ann Winblad

There are very few men of genius in advertising agencies. But we need all we can find. Almost without exception they are disagreeable. Don't destroy them. They lay golden eggs.

David M. Ogilvy

Perhaps what we sometimes call "genius" is simply a refusal to altogether let go of childhood imagination.

Michael Cibenko

A great artist has died, a man with the hallmarks of a genius.

Andrzej Wajda

There's no way around it. Koizumi is a political genius. His creation of the assassin candidates has captured the public's imagination.

Yasunori Sone

The guy's a natural general, and he's a genius when it comes to football. He could be the best coach ever with all he knows about the game.

Kyle Turley

Every man is a potential genius until he does something.

Herbert Beerbohm Tree

Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.

Edward Gibbon

Talent does whatever it wants to do.... Genius does only what it can.

Eugene Delacroix

Too often we forget that genius, too, depends upon the data within its reach, that even Archimedes could not have devised Edison's inventions.

Ernest Dimnet