
“Talent is a gift, but character is a choice.”
Atta Troll, ch. 24 (1843)
“Talent is a gift, but character is a choice.”
“A talent is formed in stillness, a character in the world's torrent.”
Torquato Tasso, Act I, sc. ii (1790)
“Characters and talents are complemental and suppletory. The world stands by balanced antagonisms.”
The Natural History of Intellect (1893)
Context: Characters and talents are complemental and suppletory. The world stands by balanced antagonisms. The more the peculiarities are pressed the better the result. The air would rot without lightning; and without the violence of direction that men have, without bigots, without men of fixed idea, no excitement, no efficiency.
The novelist should not make any character act absurdly, but only absurdly as seen by others. For it is so in life. Nonsense will not keep its unreason if you come into the humorist's point of view, but unhappily we find it is fast becoming sense, and we must flee again into the distance if we would laugh.
Source: The Doctrine of the Mean
Alfred Binet (1903). "La creation litteraire. Portrait psychologique de M. Paul Hervieu", L’Anne´e psychologique (10), p. 3; As cited in: Carson (1999, 361-2)
Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 203
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798)
“Talent is the enemy of taste. Taste is the enemy of talent.”
Ron English's Fauxlosophy (2016)
“Strategy will compensate the talent.
The talent will never compensate the strategy.”
“It is a very rare thing for a man of talent to succeed by his talent.”
Part 4, LXXXVIII
Meditations of a Parish Priest (1866)