
“Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is.”
Literary Essays, vol. II (1870–1890), Rousseau and the Sentimentalists
1870s, Speech in the House of Representatives (1871)
“Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is.”
Literary Essays, vol. II (1870–1890), Rousseau and the Sentimentalists
The Forgotten Man and Other Essays (corrected edition), “The Forgotten Man” 1883 http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/sumner-the-forgotten-man-and-other-essays-corrected-edition?q=Civil+liberty+is+the+status#Sumner_1225_701.
Source: 1830s, Nature http://www.emersoncentral.com/nature.htm (1836), Ch. 1, Nature
Context: The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men's farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title. To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food.
“Every man is the center of a circle, whose fatal circumference he can not pass.”
Eulogy on Benjamin Hill, United States Senate, Jan. 23, 1882.
As quoted in To Be Just Is to Love : Homilies for a Church Renewing (2001) by Walter J. Burghardt, p. 214
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 104.