“Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it.”
“Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide.”
“The eye of genius has always a plaintive expression, and its natural language is pathos.”
“Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.”
“Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius.”
“The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.”
“Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought.”
“Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together.”
“It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.”
“Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.”
“Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, but genius must be born; and never can be taught.”
“Genius is entitled to respect only when it promotes the peace and improves the happiness of mankind.”
“The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds.”
“It is personality with a penny's worth of talent. Error which chances to rise above the commonplace.”
“The greatest genius will never be worth much if he pretends to draw exclusively from his own resources.”
“Geniuses themselves don't talk about the gift of genius, they just talk about hard work and long hours.”
“Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.”
“True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.”
“Great genius takes shape by contact with another great genius, but, less by assimilation than by fiction.”
“Genius is the ability to act rightly without precedent -- the power to do the right thing the first time.”
“It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.”
“The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.”
“A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness.”
“Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves.”
“The function of genius is not to give new answers, but to pose new questions which time and mediocrity can resolve.”
“In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”
“It takes people a long time to learn the difference between talent and genius, especially ambitious young men and women.”
“His genius he was quite content in one brief sentence to define; Of inspiration one percent, of perspiration, ninety nine.”
“To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.”
“When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”