“I have known no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or defect either physical or spiritual, for what the gods had given him.”
No. 2, The Pines (1914)
And Even Now http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/evnow10.txt (1920)
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Max Beerbohm 36
English writer 1872–1956Related quotes
“I had genius. No one else in the field known to me had quite that.”
"Statement for the Day of My Death"
"Quotes"
Context: The twentieth century saw an amazing development of scholarship and criticism in the humanities, carried out by people who were more intelligent, better trained, had more languages, had a better sense of proportion, and were infinitely more accurate scholars and competent professional men than I. I had genius. No one else in the field known to me had quite that.
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), IX : Faith, Hope, and Charity
Context: Suffering is a spiritual thing. It is the most immediate revelation of consciousness, and it may be that our body was given us simply in order that suffering might be enabled to manifest itself. A man who had never known suffering, either in greater or less degree, would scarcely possess consciousness of himself. The child first cries at birth when the air, entering into his lungs and limiting him, seems to say to him: You have to breathe me in order to live!
“Once again, Caddrick had failed to use the few brains God had given him.”
Source: Ripping Time (2000), Chapter 14 (p. 441)
On writing about migrant workers (as quoted in “CUANDO LLEGUEMOS/WHEN WE ARRIVE: THE PARADOX OF MIGRATION IN TOMAS RIVERA'S "... Y NO SE LO TRAGO LA TIERRA" https://www.jstor.org/stable/25745215?seq=1)
As quoted in Vietnam Past and Present: The North, ed. Andrew Forbes and David Henley (Cognoscenti Books, 2012)