“Genius is a will-o'-the-wisp if it lacks a solid foundation of perseverence and fanatical tenacity. This is the most important thing in all of human life…”

Source: Myatt, David. Myngath - Some Recollections of the Wyrdful Life of David Myatt, CreateSpace, 2013, ISBN 978-1484110744

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), XI : The Practical Problem

Harvard address (2008)

As quoted in The New York Times (21 June 1939)

Yanni in Words. Miramax Books. Co-author David Rensin

Source: Essays In Biography (1933), Preface, p. viii
Context: I have sought with some touches of detail to bring out the solidarity and historical continuity of the High Intelligentsia of England, who have built up the foundations of our thought in the two and a half centuries, since Locke, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, wrote the first modern English book. I relate below the amazing progeny of Sir George Villiers. But the lineage of the High Intelligentsia is hardly less interbred and spiritually inter-mixed. Let the Villiers Connection fascinate the monarch or the mob and rule, or seem to rule, passing events. There is also a pride of sentiment to claim spiritual kinship with the Locke Connection and that long English line, intellectually and humanly linked with one another, to which the names in my second section belong. If not the wisest, yet the most truthful of men. If not the most personable, yet the queerest and sweetest. If not the most practical, yet of the purest public conscience. If not of high artistic genius, yet the most solid and sincere accomplishment within many of the fields which are ranged by the human mind.

Source: Running with Scissors