
“The moment of recognizing your own lack of talent is a flash of genius.”
Unkempt Thoughts (1957), p. 116
Source: The Valley of Fear
“The moment of recognizing your own lack of talent is a flash of genius.”
Unkempt Thoughts (1957), p. 116
“Genius declares itself to be a kind of higher masculinity.”
Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 111.
“You can do something with talent, but nothing with genius….”
Quoted in Jack Fishman's My Darling Clementine, the biography of Winston Churchill's wife. (p. 131).
Quote from a program at a Coolidge memorial service (1933); cited in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999). The passage did not originate with Coolidge, but evolved over several decades, appearing as early as 1881 in a youth guidance book. From [Garson O’Toole, https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/01/12/persist/, Purpose and Persistence Are Required for Success: Unrewarded Genius Is Almost a Proverb, Quote Investigator, January 12, 2016]
1930s
Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)
“In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.”
“Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities”
“Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.”
“Mediocrity can talk; but it is for genius to observe.”
Isaac D'Israeli, The Curiosities of Literature, "Men of Genius Deficient in Conversation".
Misattributed, Isaac D'Israeli