"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."

"Genius is a promontory jutting out into the infinite."

"“I have a reputation for genius,” I said, though I lowered my voice. “It can withstand some eccentricities.”"

"At ingenium ingens Inculto latet sub hoc corpore."

"Gift, like genius, I often think only means an infinite capacity for taking pains."

"Nature is the master of talents; genius is the master of nature."

"There is hardly a more common error than that of taking the man who has one talent, for a genius."

"Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use."

"Perhaps, moreover, he whose genius appears deepest and truest excels his fellows in nothing save the knack of expression; he throws out occasionally a lucky hint at truths of which every human soul is profoundly though unutterably conscious."

"Genius resembles a bell; in order to ring it must be suspended into pure air, and when a foreign body touches it, its joyful tone is silenced."

"Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such We scarcely can praise it or blame it too much; Who, born for the universe, narrow'd his mind, And to party gave up what was meant for mankind."

"Das erste und letzte, was vom Genie gefordert wird, ist Wahrheits-Liebe."

"I've come to believe that genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us."

"Genius is the power of lighting one's own fire."

"Genius and its rewards are briefly told: A liberal nature and a niggard doom, A difficult journey to a splendid tomb."

"Genius is another word for magic, and the whole point of magic is that it is inexplicable."

"Vivitur ingenio, that damn'd motto there Seduced me first to be a wicked player."

"Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores."

"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."

"When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it."

"Talent finds its models, methods, and ends, in society, exists for exhibition, and goes to the soul only for power to work. Genius is its own end, and draws its means and the style of its architecture from within."

"The continuous capacity of genius to surpass understanding remains a human constant."

"But genius must be born, and never can be taught."

"Every work of Genius is tinctured by the feelings, and often originates in the events of times."

"Philosophy becomes poetry, and science imagination, in the enthusiasm of genius."

"To think, and to feel, constitute the two grand divisions of men of genius — the men of reasoning and the men of imagination."

"Many men of genius must arise before a particular man of genius can appear."

"Fortune has rarely condescended to be the companion of genius."

"Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius."

"The man of génie is he whose ranging soul occupies itself with all that is in nature, receiving from her no idea that is not roused by his distinctive play of emotion. All is brought to life, turned to account; nothing is lost, nothing wasted.... He casts upon nature an eye gifted for the comprehension of abysses.... As for his constructs, they are too audacious for ordinary reason to inhabit.... In the arts as in the sciences … the genius seems to change the very nature of things; his character envelops whatever it touches; he casts into the future his piercing lights; he leaps ahead of his century, and it is powerless to follow him. He leaves behind those intellects which seek, even rightly, as may be, to criticize — poor lockstepped minds which leave nature as they found it. Behold him they may but are powerless to know him. For the genius alone may tell us truly who and what he is."

"The daily life of a genius, his sleep, his digestion, he ecstasies, his nails, his colds, his blood, his life and death are essentially different from the rest of mankind."

"Ever since the French revolution there has developed a vicious, cretinizing tendency to consider a genius (apart from his work) as a human being more or less the same in every sense as other ordinary mortals. This is wrong. And if this is wrong for me, the genius of the greatest spiritual order or our day, a true modern genius, it is even more wrong when applied to those who incarnated the almost divine genius of the Renaissance, such as Raphael."

"Watson and Crick were touted as the geniuses of molecular biology and lionized by the media. When a field is new, or newly fascinating in the public eye, a genius (or pair of geniuses) can become a lightning rod for the public's adulation; and molecular biology may never have another scientist who will attain the fame of Watson and Crick."

"A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition."

"The genius stands to the ordinary person as a Buddhist or Hindu jivanmukta (enlightened soul) stands to a jiva (mere soul). He is freed of animal desires, rather than chained to them. He is a passive observer who dwells in an eternal present, rather than an active participant in life driven by regrets about the past and hopes for the future."

"It is paltry philosophy if in the old-fashioned way one lays down rules and principles in total disregard of moral values. As soon as these appear one regards them as exceptions, which gives them a certain scientific status, and thus makes them into rules. Or again one may appeal to genius, which is above all rules; which amounts to admitting that rules are not only made for idiots, but are idiotic in themselves."

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

""Genius" (which means transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all)."

"Humor is properly the exponent of low things; that which first renders them poetical to the mind. The man of Humor sees common life, even mean life, under the new light of sportfulness and love; whatever has existence has a charm for him. Humor 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."

"Talk not of genius baffled. Genius is master of man; Genius does what it must, and talent does what it can. Blot out my name, that the spirits of Shakespeare and Milton and Burns Look not down on the praises of fools with a pity my soul yet spurns."

"Genius is bound to be indulgent. It should know human errors so well — has, with its large luminous forces, such errors itself when it deigns to be human, that, where others may scorn, genius should only pity."

"La génie n'est utre chose qu'une grande aptitude à la patience."

"—Did you never hear it said that what sets the genius apart from the plodder is the ability to see what happens and not what he expects to happen?"

"The truth is, that necessity prompts invention, and genius is common to every age. The early poet, therefore, of superior powers, can operate on external nature, as well as on the polity and manners of his nation, with preeminent elegance and splendor. When the division of labor takes place, the modern poet, particularly in the comic walks of life, is capable of displaying a greater variety of character than the ancient. Hence Shakespeare and Congreve are infinitely superior to Plautus and Terence in rich variety of comic painting."

"Men of genius are scarce, but men of genius who use their genius for the benefit of the world are scarcer."

"Genius learns from nature; talent from books."

"Tallent must hav memory, genius don't require it."

"Genius after all ain't ennything more than elegant kommon sense."

"Genius seems to be the fakulty ov doing a thing excellently well, that nobody supposed could be done at all."