“Genius always gives its best at first; prudence, at last.”
“Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them.”
“Every person of genius is considerably helped by being dead.”
“I'm not a genius. I'm just a tremendous bundle of experience.”
“Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple.”
“Fortune has rarely condescended to be the companion of genius.”
“What is genius but the power of expressing a new individuality?”
“When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.”
“Everybody denies I am a genius --but nobody ever called me one!”
“Nature is the master of talents; genius is the master of nature.”
“Everybody hates a prodigy, detests an old head on young shoulders.”
“The first and last thing required of genius is, love of the truth.”
“The real people of genius were resolute workers not idle dreamers.”
“There is no genius in life like the genius of energy and industry.”
“One of the satisfactions of a genius is his will-power and obstinacy.”
“I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.”
“Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.”
“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”
“The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.”
“Passion holds up the bottom of the universe and genius paints up its roof.”
“Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in the shade.”
“Genius makes its observations in short-hand; talent writes them out at length.”
“Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.”
“Genius unexerted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks.”
“Genius is the gold in the mine; talent is the miner who works and brings it out.”
“Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor.”
“Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an inhabitual way.”
“True genius sees with the eyes of a child and thinks with the brain of a genius.”
“Talent is a faculty that is highly developed, but genius commands all the faculties.”
“We know that the nature of genius is to provide idiots with ideas twenty years later.”