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Quotes about genius

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Improvement makes straight roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius.
William Blake1757–1827Proverbs of Hell, Line 66
The true Genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.
Samuel Johnson1709–1784Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)
Genius is the aptitude for seeing invisible things, for stirring intangible things, for painting things that have no features.
Joseph Joubert1754–1824The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, tr. Paul Auster (1983)
There is no more light in a genius than in any other honest man⁠—but he has a particular kind of lens to concentrate this light into a burning point.
Ludwig Wittgenstein1889–1951Culture and Value (1980), p. 41e
Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation, as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.
Joseph Addison1672–1719The Spectator (1711–1714), No. 166 (10 September 1711)
- Reading
But the greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances.
Aristotle384–322 BCPoetics, 1459a.4
- Writing
Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.
IDIsaac D'Israeli1766–1848Curiosities of Literature (1791–1834)
- Talking
Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
William James1842–1910The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 19
Genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.
Herman Melville1819–1891Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)
Others abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask — Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge.
Matthew Arnold1822–1888The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems (1849), “Shakespeare”, l. 1
- Poetry
One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius; and the feminine situation has up to the present rendered this becoming practically impossible.
Simone de Beauvoir1908–1986The Second Sex (1949), Bk. I, Pt. 2, Ch. 8: Since the French Revolution: the Job and the Vote, p. 133
- Women
When one compares the talents one has with those of a Leibniz, one is tempted to throw away one’s books and go die quietly in the dark of some forgotten corner.
Denis Diderot1713–1784Oeuvres complètes, vol. 7, p. 678
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 Diderot1713–1784On Dramatic Poetry (1758)
In the judgment of the most competent living mathematicians, Fräulein Noether was the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began.
Albert Einstein1879–1955Obituary for Emmy Noether (1935)
- Women
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.
Thomas Carlyle1795–1881“Schiller”, first published in Fraser’s Magazine (1831).
- Humor