
“Genius is what a man invents when he is looking for a way out.”
1840s, Past and Present (1843)
“Genius is what a man invents when he is looking for a way out.”
“Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over influence.”
1830s, The American Scholar http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm (1837)
1830s, The American Scholar http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm (1837)
Source: The Literary Character, Illustrated by the History of Men of Genius (1795–1822), Ch. IV.
"Of Experiment and of the Genius of Discoveries," p. 37
An Examination of the Philosophy of Francis Bacon (1836)
As quoted in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1899) by James Wood, p. 6