There are two kinds of talent, man-made talent and God-given talent. With man-made talent you have to work very hard. With God-given talent, you just touch it up once in a while.
~ Pearl Bailey

Talent isn't genius, and no amount of energy can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing. I won't be a commonplace dauber, so I don't intend to try any more.
~ Louisa May Alcott

I believe that every person is born with talent.
~ Maya Angelou

It takes little talent to see clearly what lies under one's nose, a good deal of it to know in which direction to point that organ.
~ W. H. Auden

Talent is only the starting point.
~ Irving Berlin

A man gift will make a way for him.
~ Bible

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, ''I used everything you gave me.''.
~ Erma Bombeck

Middle age snuffs out more talent than even wars or sudden death does.
~ Gerald Brenan

If I have any talent at all it's from God, and my mom, who was on Capitol Records also.
~ Garth Brooks

Your talent is God's gift to you; what you do with it is your gift to God.
~ Leo Buscaglia

Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.
~ Cyril Connolly

A talent somewhat above mediocrity, shrewd and not too sensitive, is more likely to rise in the world than genius.
~ Charles Horton Cooley

Ordinary people think that talent must be always on its own level and that it arises every morning like the sun, rested and refreshed, ready to draw from the same storehouse -- always open, always full, always abundant -- new treasures that it will heap up on those of the day before; such people are unaware that, as in the case of all mortal things, talent has its increase and decrease, and that independently of the career it takes, like everything that breathes... it undergoes all the accidents of health, of sickness, and of the dispositions of the soul -- its gaiety or its sadness. As with our perishable flesh. talent is obliged constantly to keep guard over itself, to combat, and to keep perpetually on the alert amid the obstacles that witness the exercise of its singular power.
~ EugFne Delacroix

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.
~ Henry Van Dyke

God doesn't give people talents that he doesn't want people to use.
~ Iron Eagle

Every man has his own vocation, talent is the call.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is a happy talent to know how to play.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book; a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Talent for talent's sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson