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A genius is the man in whom you are least likely to find the power of attending to anything insipid or distasteful in itself. He breaks his engagements, leaves his letters unanswered, neglects his family duties incorrigibly, because he is powerless to turn his attention down and back from those more interesting trains of imagery with which his genius constantly occupies his mind.

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Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better.

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All the means of action - the shapeless masses - the materials - lie everywhere about us. What we need is the celestial fire to change the flint into the transparent crystal, bright and clear. That fire is genius.

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Genius without religion is only a lamp on the outer gate of a palace; it may serve to cast a gleam on those that are without while the inhabitant sits in darkness.

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The only difference between a genius and one of common capacity is that the former anticipates and explores what the latter accidentally hits upon; but even the man of genius himself more frequently employs the advantages that chance presents him; it is the lapidary who gives value to the diamond which the peasant has dug up without knowing its value.

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If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

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Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius.

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When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

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Genius might well be defined as the ability to makes a platitude sound as though it were an original remark.

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Let the minor genius go his light way and enjoy his life - the great nature cannot so live, he is never really in holiday mood, even though he often plucks flowers by the wayside and ties them into knots and garlands like little children and lays out on a sunny morning.

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