“You can do something with talent, but nothing with genius….”
Quoted in Jack Fishman's My Darling Clementine, the biography of Winston Churchill's wife. (p. 131).
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Margot Asquith 12
Anglo-Scottish socialite, author and wit 1864–1945Related quotes
“Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.”
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Journal
Quote from a program at a Coolidge memorial service (1933); cited in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999). The passage did not originate with Coolidge, but evolved over several decades, appearing as early as 1881 in a youth guidance book. From [Garson O’Toole, https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/01/12/persist/, Purpose and Persistence Are Required for Success: Unrewarded Genius Is Almost a Proverb, Quote Investigator, January 12, 2016]
1930s
“Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius.”
Source: The Valley of Fear
“Talent does what it can: Genius does what it must.”
“Genius does what it must, talent does what it can.”
Last Words, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Rolling Stone Issue No. 213 (May 20, 1976) on Charlie Chaplin
“Criticism is something you can easily avoid by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.”
Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 112.