All Quotes By Tag: Genius

“যদিও শেইক্সপীয়ার ও তাঁর লেখা তাঁর যুগে খুব বেশি মূল্য পায়নি, ‘সময়’ তাঁকে পরে তাঁর প্রাপ্য সম্মানটুকু ঠিকই দিয়েছে!”

“But genius, and even great talent, springs less from seeds of intellect and social refinement superior to those of other people than from the faculty of transforming and transposing them. To heat a liquid with an electric lamp requires not the strongest lamp possible, but one of which the current can cease to illuminate, can be diverted so as to give heat instead of light. To mount the skies it is not necessary to have the most powerful of motors, one must have a motor which, instead of continuing to run along the earth’s surface, intersecting with a vertical line the horizontal line which it began by following, is capable of converting its speed into lifting power. Similarly, 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 int he intrinsic quality of the scene reflected.”

“The turmoil and dislocations confronting present-day society will not be solved until both the scientific and religious genius of the human race are fully utilized.”

“Genius cannot simply float in the clouds, it must also operate down on earth.”

“It might be said of Miss [Djuna] Barnes,” [T.S. Eliot] wrote, “who is incontestably one of the most original writers of our time, that never has so much genius been combined with so little talent.”

“I enjoy the fantastic and the sheer excitement of having a sheet of white paper and a pen in one’s hand and no dictator on earth can say what word I put down – I put down what I want to put down.”

“If for instance the sentiment possessing for the moment the empire of our mind is sorrow, will not the genius sharpen the sorrow and the sorrow purify the genius? Together, will they not be like a cut diamond for which language is only the wax on which they stamp their imprint? I believe that genius, thus awakened, has no need to seek out details, that it scarcely pauses to reflect, that it never thinks of unity: I believe that the details come naturally without search by the poet, that inspiration takes the place of reflection and as for unity, I think there is no unity so perfect as that which results from a heart filled with a single idea…The nature of genius is related to that of instinct; it’s operation is both simple and marvelous.”

“Remember William Blake who said: “Improvement makes straight, straight roads, but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius.”The truth is, life itself, is always startling, strange, unexpected. But when the truth is told about it everybody knows at once that it is life itself and not made up.But in ordinary fiction, movies, etc, everything is smoothed out to seem plausible–villains made bad, heroes splendid, heroines glamorous, and so on, so that no one believes a word”

“That’s why I’ve just gone on … collecting this particular kind of stuff – what you might call riff-raff. There’s not a book here, Lawford, that hasn’t at least a glimmer of the real thing in it – just Life, seen through a living eye, and felt. As for literature, and style, and all that gallimaufry, don’t fear for them if your author has the ghost of a hint of genius in his making.”

“The lazy will always attribute genius to some ‘inspiration’ that comes for mere waiting.”

“One night I was layin’ down,I heard Papa talkin’ to Mama,I heard Papa say to let that boy boogie-woogie.’Cause it’s in him and it’s got to come out.”

“No tricks, no tools, but talent makes a task truly top class.”

“Preemptively interwoven into this ingeniously crafted existence is everything that we need to be everything that we are.”

“This man has talent, that man geniusAnd here’s the strange and cruel difference:Talent gives pence and his reward is gold,Genius gives gold and gets no more than pence.”

“Poetry destroyed? Genius banished? No! Mediocrity, no: do not let envy prompt you to the thought. No; they not only live, but reign, and redeem: and without their divine influence spread everywhere, you would be in hell–the hell of your own meanness.”