A genius is one who can do anything except make a living.
~ Joey Lauren Adams

Genius is sorrow's child.
~ John Adams

It takes people a long time to learn the difference between talent and genius, especially ambitious young men and women.
~ Louisa May Alcott

Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.
~ Henri Frederic Amiel

To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.
~ Henri Frederic Amiel

We know that the nature of genius is to provide idiots with ideas twenty years later.
~ Louis Aragon

There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.
~ Aristotle

There are big men, men of intellect, intellectual men, men of talent and men of action; but the great man is difficult to find, and it needs --apart from discernment --a certain greatness to find him.
~ Margot Asquith

Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
~ W. H. Auden

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

Genius is childhood recaptured.
~ Jean Baudrillard

One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius.
~ Simone De Beauvoir

Genius unexerted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks.
~ Henry Ward Beecher

Men of genius are not quick judges of character. Deep thinking and high imagining blunt that trivial instinct by which you and I size people up.
~ Sir Max Beerbohm

Genius is the gold in the mine; talent is the miner who works and brings it out.
~ Marguerite Gardiner Blessington

Genius makes its observations in short-hand; talent writes them out at length.
~ Christian Nevell Bovee

Since when was genius found respectable?
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

What is genius but the power of expressing a new individuality?
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Genius is nothing but a great capacity for patience.
~ Georges-Louis Leclerc Buffon

Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius.
~ Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton