Ralph Waldo Emerson Genius Quotations

Genius always finds itself a century too early.

The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct.

Genius seems to consistent merely in trueness of sight.

We owe to genius always the same debt, of lifting the curtain from the common, and showing us that divinities are sitting disguised in the seeming gang of gypsies and peddlars.

The vulgar call good fortune that which really is produced by the calculations of genius.

The enthusiast always finds the master, the masters, whom he seeks. Always genius seeks genius, desires nothing so much as to be a pupil and to find those who can lend it aid to perfect itself.

Luckily for us, now that steam has narrowed the Atlantic to a strait, the nervous, rocky West is intruding a new and continental element into the national mind, as we shall yet have an American genius.

The civility of the world has reached that pitch that their more moral genius is becoming indispensable, and the quality of this race is to be honored for itself.

It is not what talents or genius a man has, but how he is to his talents, that constitutes friendship and character. The man thatstands by himself, the universe stands by him also.

Genius is the naturalist or geographer of the supersensible regions, and draws their map; and, by acquainting us with new fields of activity, cools our affection for the old. These are at once accepted as the reality, of which the world we have conversed with is the show.

Talent may frolic and juggle; genius realizes and adds.

But genius is religious. It is a larger imbibing of the common heart.

Genius is its own end.

When the gods come among men, they are not known.

Genius has infused itself into nature. It indicates itself by a small excess of good, a small balance in brute facts always favorable to the side of reason.

It is easy to see that what is best written or done by genius in the world, was no man's work but came by wide social labor, whena thousand wrought like one, sharing the same impulse.

If you criticize a fine genius, the odds are that you are out of your reckoning, and, instead of the poet, are censuring your owncaricature of him.

We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates. We read the quotation with his eyes, andfind a new and fervent sense; as a passage from one of the poets, well recited, borrows new interest from the rendering. As the journals say, "the italics are ours.

Genius is intellect constructive.

There is genius as well in virtue as in intellect. 'Tis the doctrine of faith over works.

Genius, even, as it is the greatest good, is he greatest harm.

The difference between talent and genius is in the direction of the current: in genius, it is from within outward; in talent from without inward.

Genius has no taste for weaving sand.

The charm of the best courages is that they are inventions, inspirations, flashes of genius.

The miracles of genius always rest on profound convictions which refuse to be analyzed.

Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage.

The young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is.

Genius is saying what is in your heart, because it's in everyone's heart.

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.

So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person's genius is confined to a very few hours.

Common sense is as rare as genius.

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world alters the world.

Genius is the power to labor better and more availably. Deserve thy genius: exalt it.

Accept your genius and say what you think.

The genius of the Platonists, is intoxicating to the student, yet how few particulars of it can I detach from all their books.

For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.

Universities are of course hostile to geniuses.

The greatest genius is the most indebted person.

Every mind has a new compass, a new direction of its own, differencing its genius and aim from every other mind.--We call this specialty the bias of each individual. And none of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

Genius is power, talent is applicability.

No power of genius has ever yet had the smallest success in explaining existence. The perfect enigma remains.

Genius Borrows nobly.

The difference between Talent and Genius is that Talent says things which he has never heard but once, and Genius things which he has never heard.

Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend

Genius appeals to the future.

There is a genius of a nation, which is not to be found in the numerical citizens, but which characterizes the society.

A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness.