Genius Quotes

The most tragic thing in the world is a man of genius who is not also a man of honor.

The particulars of life do not matter to the artist; they merely provide him with the opportunity to lay bare his genius.[Les données de la vie ne comptent pas pour l’artiste, elles ne sont pour lui qu’une occasion de mettre à nu son génie.]

Genius is a form of the life force that is deeply versed in illness, that both draws creatively from it and creates through it.

Every child is to a certain extent a genius, and every genius to a certain extent a child.[Jedes Kind gewissermaaßen ein Genie, und jedes Genie gewissermaaßen ein Kind.]

What’s genius? I don’t know but I do know that the difference between a madman and a professional is that a pro does as well as he can within what he has set out to do and a madman does exceptionally well at what he can’t help doing.

Thought alone holds the tradition of the bygone life. The endless legacy of the past to the present is the secret source of human genius.[La pensée seule a la tradition de l’antérieur. Ce legs perpétuel du passé au présent et du présent à l’avenir, est le secret des génies humains.]

They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains. It’s a very bad definition, but it does apply to detective work.

There is no greater consolation for mediocrity than that the genius is not immortal.

The reason why a work of genius is not easily admired from the first is that the man who has created it is extraordinary, that few other men resemble him. It is his work itself that, by fertilising the rare minds capable of understanding it, will make them increase and multiply.[Ce qui est cause qu’une oeuvre de génie est difficilement admirée tout de suite, c’est que celui qui l’a écrite est extraordinaire, que peu de gens lui ressemblent. C’est son oeuvre elle-même qui, en fécondant les rares esprits capables de le comprendre, les fera croître et multiplier.]

The men who produce works of genius are not those who live in the most delicate atmosphere, whose conversation is the most brilliant or their culture the most extensive, but those who have had the power, ceasing suddenly to live only for themselves, to transform their personality into a sort of mirror, in such a way that their life, however mediocre it may be socially and even, in a sense, intellectually, is reflected by it, genius consisting in reflecting power and not in the intrinsic quality of the scene reflected.[De même ceux qui produisent des oeuvres géniales ne sont pas ceux qui vivent dans le milieu le plus délicat, qui ont la conversation la plus brillante, la culture la plus étendue, mais ceux qui ont eu le pouvoir, cessant brusquement de vivre pour eux-mêmes, de rendre leur personnalité pareille à un miroir, de telle sorte que leur vie si médiocre d’ailleurs qu’elle pouvait être mondainement et même, dans un certain sens, intellectuellement parlant, s’y reflète, le génie consistant dans le pouvoir réfléchissant et non dans la qualité intrinsèque du spectacle reflété.]

The man who can perpetually bring his thought to bear upon his facts is a man of genius; but the man of the highest genius does not display genius at all times; if he did, he would be like to God.[L’homme qui peut empreindre perpétuellement la pensée dans le fait est un homme de génie; mais l’homme qui a le plus de génie ne le déploie pas à tous les instants, il ressemblerait trop à Dieu.]

Talent is like the marksman who hits a target which others cannot reach; genius is like the marksman who hits a target, as far as which others cannot even see.[Also known as:]Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.[Das Talent gleicht dem Schützen, der ein Ziel trifft, welches die Uebrigen nicht erreichen können; das Genie dem, der eines trifft, bis zu welchem sie nicht ein Mal zu sehen vermögen.]