“Too often we forget that genius, too, depends upon the data within its reach, that even Archimedes could not have devised Edison's inventions. We also forget that genius is not genius all the time, although it is superior all the time.”
Source: The Art of Thinking (1928), p. 169
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Ernest Dimnet 17
French writer 1866–1954Related quotes

“We mustn't forget how quickly the visions of genius become the canned goods of intellectuals.”
Herzog (1964) [Penguin Classics, 2003, ISBN 0-142-43729-8], p. 82
General sources

“Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius.”
Discourse no. 3; vol. 1, p. 57.
Discourses on Art

“Genius does not only require superior knowledge and skill, but also superior patience.”
Annotated Drawings by Eugene J. Martin: 1977-1978

As quoted in The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution: The Origins of Ideological Polarization in the 20th Century, Jacob L. Talmon, University of California Press (1981) p. 451. Sorel’s March 1921 conversations with Jean Variot, published in Variot’s Propos de Georges Sorel, (1935) Paris, pp. 53-57, 66-86 passim

“Despair and Genius are too oft connected”
Source: Byron Poems

Source: 1910s, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays http://archive.org/stream/mysticism00russuoft/mysticism00russuoft_djvu.txt (1918), Ch. 2: The Place of Science in a Liberal Education