Kevin Stilley

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Genius – select quotes

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

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Mental Health Certificate

creativity-mental-health

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The following comes from Madeleine L’Engle, in  A Circle of Quiet (NY: Harper, 1972), page 54:

That night during a wakeful period I thought about all the people in history, literature, art, whom I most admire:  Mozart, Shakespeare, Homer, El Greco, St. John, Chekhov, Gregory of Nyssa, Dostoevsky, Emily Bronte:  not one of them would qualify for a mental-health certificate.  It’s been a small game with me this summer to ask, “Do you know anybody you really admire, who has really been important to the world in a creative way, who would qualify for a mental-health certificate?”  So far nobody has come up with one.

I took L’Engle’s challenge.  And, my list is pretty short…

Other than Jesus, me and you, I don’t know who else would qualify to appear on the list.  And, I ‘m not that sure about you.

__________

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Arthur Schopenhauer – select quotes

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

Were an Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I should be forced to answer him: It is that part of the world which is haunted by the incredible delusion that man was created out of nothing, and that his present birth is his first entrance into life.

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