These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.
~ Abigail Smith Adams
Genius is sorrow’s child.
~ John Adams
Firmness of purpose is one of the most necessary sinews of character, and one of the best instruments of success. Without it, genius wastes its efforst in a maze of inconsistencies.
~ Lord Chesterfield
Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
~ Calvin Coolidge
Man is more courageous, pugnacious, and energetic than woman, and has a more inventive genius.
~ Charles Darwin, in The Descent of Man, ch. 8
Common sense is genius dressed up in work clothes.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Genius borrows nobly.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, in Letters and Social Aims
The lucky person passes for a genius.
~ Euripides
Genius without education is like silver in the mine.
~ Benjamin Franklin
Seize this very minute;
What you can do, or dream you can, begin it;
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Only engage and the mind grows heated;
Begin and then the work will be completed.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Constant effort and frequent mistakes are the stepping stones to genius.
~ Elbert Hubbard
The brotherhood of men does not imply their equality. Families have their fools and their men of genius, their black sheep and their saints, their worldly successes and their worldly failures. A man should treat his brothers lovingly and with justice, according to the deserts of each. But the deserts of every brother are not the same.
~ Aldous Huxley
The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which mean never losing your enthusiasm.
~ Aldous Huxley
We are all geniuses up to the age of ten.
~ Aldous Huxley
Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
~ William James
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Here genius lies enshrined.
Here sleep in silent majesty
The monarchs of the mind
~ Inscription in the St. Louis Public Library
