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Genius is exceptional ability or skill

• Genius: Very great and rare natural ability or skill, especially in a particular area such as science or art, or a person who has this. Cambridge Dictionary
• Genius: Exceptional intellectual or creative power or other natural ability. Oxford Dictionary
• Skill,  Greatness,  Intelligence,  Mastery,  Inspiration,  Imagination,  Originality,  Inventiveness,  Talent

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Talent is a flame. Genius is a fire.

• Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius. Henri Frederic Amiel
• Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius. Arthur Conan Doyle
• Talent does what it can: Genius does what it must. Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
• Genius is the gold in the mine; talent is the miner who works and brings it out. Marguerite Gardiner
• Genius makes its observations in short-hand; talent writes them out at length. Christian Nevell Bovee
• Talent is a faculty that is highly developed, but genius commands all the faculties. Francis Herbert Hedge
• Nature is the master of talents; genius is the master of nature. Josiah Gilbert Holland
• The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius. Oliver Wendell Holmes
• Who in the same given time can produce more than others has vigor; who can produce more and better, has talents; who can produce what none else can, has genius. Johann Kaspar Lavater
• Talent is a flame. Genius is a fire. Bern Williams
• Life is not about discovering our talents; it is about pushing our talents to the limit and discovering our genius. Robert Brault
• I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works. Oscar Wilde
• Genius is the talent of a dead man. Carl Sandburg
• Talent

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Everyone is a genius in their own special way …

• Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.  Albert Einstein
• We all have special gifts, unique imaginations, our little bit of genius: the spark of life that’s wholly ours. Richard Koch
• Genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us. John Taylor Gatto
• I believe that every man has consummate genius within him. Some appear to have it more than others only because they are aware of it more than others are, and the awareness or unawareness of it is what makes each one of them into masters or holds them down to mediocrity. I believe that mediocrity is self-inflicted and that genius is self-bestowed. Walter Russell

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… and for many, our genius lies dormant, waiting to be unleashed

• The qualities of creativity and genius are within you, awaiting your decision to match up with the power of intention. Wayne Dyer
• Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered – either by themselves or by others. Mark Twain
• We all have something that we are meant to do. Your genius will shine through, and happiness will fill your life, the instant you discover your higher purpose and then direct all your energies towards it.  Robin Sharma
• We are each born with a spark of genius. It’s our job to find this spark and give it the fuel it needs to burn brightly. Che Garman

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Life is about discovering our genius

• Life is not about discovering our talents; it is about pushing our talents to the limit and discovering our genius. Robert Brault
• Just as every human has within himself the same essence of consciousness, so is genius a potential that resides within everyone—it simply waits for the right circumstance to express itself. David R. Hawkins

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Genius is childhood recaptured

• Childhood and genius have the same master-organ in common – inquisitiveness. Edwin Bulwar- Lytton
• Do not train children in learning by force and harshness but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each. Plato
• Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them. Richard Buckminster Fuller
• Genius is childhood recaptured. Rene Dubos
• Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with man’s physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed. Charles Baudelaire
• I am convinced all of humanity is born with more gifts than we know. Most are born geniuses and just get de-geniused rapidly.  Buckminster Fuller
• If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• 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
• True genius sees with the eyes of a child and thinks with the brain of a genius. Puzant Kevork Thomajan
• Inner child,  Childhood

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Genius is a process

• As much as we would love to achieve great things quickly, it is not the way our world works. Genius is a process. Robin Sharma

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Genius is 99% perspiration

• Genius begins great works, labour alone finishes them. Joseph Joubert
• Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Thomas Edison
• Genius is seldom recognized for what it is: a great capacity for hard work. Henry Ford
• If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn’t call it genius. Michelangelo Buonarroti
• Genius unexerted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks. Henry Ward Beecher
• Genius is the gold in the mine; talent is the miner who works and brings it out. Marguerite Gardiner
• The real people of genius were resolute workers not idle dreamers. George Henry Lewes
• There is no genius in life like the genius of energy and industry. Don G. Mitchell
• Geniuses themselves don’t talk about the gift of genius, they just talk about hard work and long hours.   C. Penney
• The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds. David Hume
• Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labor in it, but they labor in it because they excel. William Hazlitt
• Hard work  Diligence,  Perseverance

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Genius is often a collaborative effort

• The greatest genius will never be worth much if he pretends to draw exclusively from his own resources. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice. Virginia Woolf
• Collaboration

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Without goals and purpose, genius wastes its effort

• An average person with average talent, ambition and education, can outstrip the most brilliant genius in our society, if that person has clear, focused goals. Brian Tracy
• 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 efforts in a maze of inconsistencies. Lord Chesterfield Stanhope
• We all have something that we are meant to do. Your genius will shine through, and happiness will fill your life, the instant you discover your higher purpose and then direct all your energies towards it.  Robin Sharma
• Goal setting,  Purpose,  Effort

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Genius is about thinking and dreaming

• Man is a genius when he is dreaming. Akira Kurosawa
• Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active. Leonardo da Vinci
• Thinking,  Dreaming

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Genius is about lighting your own fire

• One of the strongest characteristics of genius is the power of lighting its own fire. John W. Foster
• Motivation,  Enthusiasm

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Genius is about creativity and originality

• Our creative genius is the fountainhead of originality. It fires our compulsion to evolve. It inspires us to challenge norms. Creative genius is about flying to new heights on untested wings. It is about the danger of crashing. Gordon MacKenzie
• The principle mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers. Arthur Koestler
• What is genius but the power of expressing a new individuality? Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• When human power becomes so great and original that we can account for it only as a kind of divine imagination, we call it genius. William Crashaw
• Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it. Germaine De Stael
• Creativity,  Originality

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Genius is about using yourself fully and maximising your potential

• You know deep inside you that you will never be fully satisfied until you have anchored yourself in your Zone of Genius. To do less would be to hold back, and long ago you made a handshake deal with the universe that you wouldn’t do that. The seductive comforts of success, though, can lull us into accepting the status quo. In that state of comfort, it’s easy to forget the deal you made with the universe to use yourself fully. Gay Hendricks
• Potential

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Genius is having many bright ideas …

• Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
• Ideas

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… and the ability to execute ideas

• Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind. Scott Fitzgerald
• Genius lies not in thinking of ideas, but in the ability to execute the ideas. Jane McElyea
• It is the essence of genius to make use of the simplest ideas. Charles Peguy

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Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple

• An intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction. Hoshang N. Akhtar
• Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple. C.W.Ceram
• Simplicity is the most difficult thing to secure in this world; it is the last limit experience and the last effort of genius. George Sand
• A genius is someone who takes a complex thing and makes it look simple. An academic does the opposite. Robert Fanney
• Complexity,  Simplicity

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Genius is preventing problems

• Intellectuals solve problems…. geniuses prevent them. Albert Einstein
• Problem solving

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Genius is common sense in uncommon degree

• Common sense has given to words their ordinary signification, and common sense is the genius of humankind. Francois Pierre Guizot
• Common sense is as rare as genius, – is the basis of genius. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Common sense is as rare as genius. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.  Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Common sense is genius in homespun. Alfred North Whitehead
• Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is Genius. George Bernard Shaw
• Common sense is only a modification of talent. Genius is an exaltation of it. The difference is therefore in degree, not nature. Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
• Common sense is the genius of humanity. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Common sense

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Genius is hilarity and cheerfulness

• A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition. Charles Caleb Colton
• Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius. Thomas Carlyle
• People of humor are always in some degree people of genius. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Humour,  Cheerfulness

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Genius is a great aptitude for patience

• Genius is nothing but a great aptitude for patience. George- Louis de Buffon
• God bestows upon one man genius without patience and upon another man patience without genius. The relative achievements of the two are often surprising. Walter C. Klein
• Never think that God’s delays are God’s denials. Hold on; Hold fast; Hold out. Patience is genius.  Georges- Louis Leclerc Buffon
• Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius. Benjamin Disraeli
• Genius is eternal patience. Michelangelo
• Patience

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Genius is exploring the new

• Genius of any kind is the ability and willingness to leave the known world behind and explore new territory. Karla Mclaren
• Exploring

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Genius is seeing things in an unhabitual way

• Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way. William James
• Explore the familiar with new eyes

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Genius creates trends rather than follows them

• Geniuses don’t fritter their precious minds on mass trends. They create the trends that alter the masses. Alan Cohen
• Conformity

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Here are some more signs of genius

• First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information. Winston Churchill
• What is genius, anyway, if it isn’t the ability to give an adequate response to a great challenge? Bette Greene
• To forgive is wisdom, to forget is genius. Joyce Cary
• The function of genius is not to give new answers, but to pose new questions which time and mediocrity can resolve. R. Trevor- Roper
• Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought. Simone Weil
• He was a genius – that is to say, a man who does superlatively and without obvious effort something that most people cannot do by the uttermost exertion of their abilities. Robertson Davies
• To see things in the seed is genius. Lao Tzu
• We know that the nature of genius is to provide idiots with ideas twenty years later.  Louis Aragon

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Genius is a higher power working through you

• Genius is the union of man and God in the acts of the soul. Great men are always greater than their deeds. They are in connection with a reserve power that is without limit. Wallace D. Wattles
• The definition of genius is that it acts unconsciously; and those who have produced immortal works, have done so without knowing how or why. The greatest power operates unseen. William Hazlitt
• Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Genius is by definition a style of consciousness characterized by the ability to access high energy attractor patterns. It is not a personality characteristic. It is not something that a person has, nor even something that someone is. Those in whom we recognize genius commonly disclaim it. A universal characteristic of genius is humility. The genius has always attributed his insights to some higher influence. David R. Hawkins
• When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay, God is within, and your genius is within. And what need have they of light to see what you are doing? Epictetus
• Brain researchers estimate that your unconscious database outweighs the conscious on an order exceeding ten million to one. This database is the source of your hidden, natural genius. In other words, a part of you is much smarter than you are. The wise people regularly consult that smarter part. Michael Gelb

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Genius comes through continued focus and attention

• I used to be a big multi-tasker, but I realized that it didn’t work for me, and it probably doesn’t for you either. Pick one thing, eliminate distractions, and focus. It’s the only way to unleash your inner genius. Henri Junttila
• Genius is nothing but continued attention. Claude Adrien Helvetius
• If there be anything that can be called genius, it consists chiefly in ability to give that attention to a subject which keeps it steadily in the mind, till we have surveyed it accurately on all sides. Robert Quillen
• Focus,  Concentration,  Attention

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Genius comes from passion and enthusiasm

• Passion is the deep, inner drive to reach for what we love. Passion is the genesis of genius.   Tony Robbins
• Enthusiasm is the genuine Yes! that will uncork your genius, signal your muses to come down, and magnetize the resources you need to be within your reach. Danielle LaPorte
• Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Passion,  Enthusiasm

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Genius comes from practice

• The key factor separating geniuses from the merely accomplished is not a divine spark. It’s not I.Q., a generally bad predictor of success, even in realms like chess. Instead, it’s deliberate practice. Top performers spend more hours (many more hours) rigorously practicing their craft. David Brooks
• Practice

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Genius comes from being fully ourselves, rather than conforming

• We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own or other peoples’ models, learn to be ourselves, and allow our natural channel to open. Shakti Gawain
• Towering genius disdains a beaten path.  Abraham Lincoln
• Conformity,  Be who you are

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Genius comes from constant effort and frequent mistakes

• Constant effort and frequent mistakes are the stepping stones of genius. Elbert Hubbard
• Genius is perseverance in disguise. Mike Newlin
• Remember, no matter how ready and willing you are, all change is inevitably interspersed with backsliding… but… everyday geniuses are programmed to bounce back. Mary-Elaine Jacobsen
• Success is more a function of consistent common sense than it is of genius. An Wang
• One of the satisfactions of a genius is his will-power and obstinacy.  Man Ray
• Effort,  Mistakes

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Genius comes from boldness

• What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in itJohann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Boldness,  Risk taking

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Genius comes from spending time alone

• We rarely get our best ideas when we’re officially “at work. If we want to enter the domain of genius, we’ve got to take time for solitude and relaxation. Michael Gelb
• Solitude is the soil in which genius is planted, creativity grows, and legends bloom. Mike Norton
• Solitude

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Don’t allow your genius to be spoiled or blocked

• Conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long; even if it is, the consciousness of possessing and using it well should satisfy one, and the great charm of all power is modesty. Louisa May Alcott
• I recognized that it was excessive fear and self-doubt that were the greatest detractors of personal genius. It broke my heart to see students know the answers, yet lack the courage to act on the answer. Often in the real world, it’s not the smart who get ahead, but the bold. Robert T. Kiyosaki
• One of the biggest ways we limit our potential and deny our genius is following The Herd and modeling The Crowd. Robin Sharma

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Geniuses are usually considered crazy until they change the world

• History, though, shows us that the people who end up changing the world—the great political, social, scientific, technological, artistic, even sports revolutionaries—are always nuts, until they’re right, and then they’re geniuses. John Eliot
• Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do. Apple advertisement
• When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. Jonathan Swift

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There is sometimes a fine line between genius and madness

• There is no great genius without a mixture of madness. Aristotle
• Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide. John Dryden
• The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success. Bruce Feirstein
• There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line. Oscar Levant
• Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring. Marilyn Monroe
• Some were brilliant bordering on genius. Others, genius bordering on madness. Erich Segal
• Insanity

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Admire genius when you see it

• Be open to beauty and excellence. Allow yourself to truly admire an object of beauty or a display of talent, genius or virtue.  Sonja Lyubomirsky
• Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius. Arthur Conan Doyle
• In every work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Until one acknowledges the genius within oneself, one will have great difficulty recognizing it in others. Dr. David R. Hawkins

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Nature is full of genius

• Each species is a masterpiece, a creation assembled with extreme care and genius. Edward O. Wilson
• Nature is full of genius, full of divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand. Henry David Thoreau
• When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Nature

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Genius is worthless without kindness and honor

• The most tragic thing in the world is a man of genius who is not a man of honor. George Bernard Shaw
• Neither genius, fame, nor love show the greatness of the soul. Only kindness can do that. Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire
• Genius is entitled to respect only when it promotes the peace and improves the happiness of mankind. Lord Essex
• 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. Carl Jung
• Kindness,  Honor

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Genius can’t be taught – or can it?

• Genius must be born, and never can be taught. John Dryden
• There’s a stark difference between the words ‘prodigy’ and ‘genius.’ Prodigies can very quickly learn what other people have already figured out; geniuses discover that which no one has ever previously discovered. Prodigies learn; geniuses do. John Green
• Genius without education is like silver in the mine. Benjamin Franklin

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• “I’m a misunderstood genius.” “What’s misunderstood?”  “Nobody thinks I’m a genius.”   Bill Watterson
• A genius is a man who can rewrap a new shirt and not have any pins left over.  Dino Levi
• A neurotic can perfectly well be a literary genius, but his greatest danger is always that he will not recognize when he is dull.  Louis Auchincloss
• Bull Market: A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius.
• But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. Carl Sagan
• Doorman: A genius who can open the door of your car with one hand, help you in with the other, and still have one left for the tip.
• Every man of genius is considerably helped by being dead.  Robert Staughton Lynd
• Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. Albert Einstein
• Everyone is born with genius, but most people only keep it a few minutes.  Edgard Varese
• Find out what people want to do, then tell them to do it. They’ll think you’re a genius. Connie Brockway
• Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. Oscar Wilde
• Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped. Elbert Hubbard
• Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds. Samuel Butler
• Genius: One who can do almost anything except make a living.
• I can’t tell you if genius is hereditary, because heaven has granted me no offspring.  James McNeill Whistler
• I can’t take his genius any more. Rita Hayworth (on why she divorced Orson Welles)
• I don’t want to be a genius-I have enough problems just trying to be a man. Albert Camus
• If confusion is the first step to knowledge, I must be a genius. Larr Leissner
• Jealousy: The tribute mediocrity pays to genius.
• My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. Fortunately everybody drinks water. Mark Twain
• No amount of genius can overcome a preoccupation with detail.  Levy’s Eighth Law
• No boss will keep an employee who is right all the time.  Pitfall of Genius
• No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as the dog does.  Christopher Morley
• Only a man who has loved a woman of genius can appreciate what happiness there is in loving a fool.  Charles de Talleyrand
• People think it must be fun to be a super genius but they don’t realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.  Bill Watterson
• Poverty is the step-mother of genius.  Josh Billings
• The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.  Albert Einstein
• The guy who invented the first wheel was an idiot; the guy who invented the other three – he was a genius.  Sid Caesar
• The problem with Ireland is that it’s a country full of genius but with absolutely no talent.  Hugh Leonard
• The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius. Oscar Wilde
• There is a thin line between genius and insanity and in Larry’s case it was sometimes so thin you could see him drifting back and forth.  Leo Durocher
• There is one subtle but important difference between genius and stupidity and that is that genius has its limits.
• There’s a fine line between genius and insanity and I have erased this line.  Oscar Levant
• We know that the nature of genius is to provide idiots with ideas twenty years later.  Louis Aragon
• What the world needs is more geniuses with humility there are so few of us left.  Oscar Levant
• Why does it so often take a genius to see the obvious?  Ashleigh Brilliant
• You don’t have to be a genius when you’re surrounded by morons. Josh Lieb

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