A Quote by Edmond de Goncourt

Genius is the talent of a person who is dead.

Edmond de Goncourt

Quote Topics

Dead Genius Person Talent

Quote Author

Edmond de Goncourt
French - Writer
May 26, 1822 - July 16, 1896

Talent warms-up the given (as they say in cookery) and makes it apparent; genius brings something new. But our time lets talent pass for genius. They want to abolish the genius, deify the genius, and let talent forge ahead.

Soren Kierkegaard

Genius is talent provided with ideals. Genius starves while talent wears purple and fine linen. The man of genius of today will infifty years' time be in most cases no more than a man of talent.

W. Somerset Maugham

The difference between talent and genius is in the direction of the current: in genius, it is from within outward; in talent from without inward.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one. Genius is the talent of a dead man.

Carl Sandburg

Talent is full of thoughts, Genius is thought. Talent is a cistern, Genius a fountain.

Edwin Percy Whipple

A person with average talent, ambition and education, can outstrip a genius in society, if that person has focused goals.

Brian Tracy

Talent wears well, genius wears itself out; talent drives a snug brougham in fact; genius, a sun-chariot in fancy.

Ouida

the distinction between talent and genius is definite. Talent combines and uses; genius combines and creates.

Anna Brownell Jameson

I think all writers have a bit of genius in them, and a bit of talent. Genius retreats but talent improves.

Martin Amis

It is not because the touch of genius has roused genius to production, but because the admiration of genius has made talent ambitious, that the harvest is still so abundant.

Margaret Fuller

Talent without genius isn't much, but genius without talent is nothing whatsoever.

Paul Valery

Talk not of genius baffled. Genius is master of man. Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Genius discovers a system; average talent stereotypes it till it is shattered by fresh genius.

Sri Aurobindo

I intend to work for this dance of the future. I do not know whether I have the necessary qualities; I may have neither genius nor talent nor temperament. But I know that I have a Will; and will and energy sometimes prove greater than either genius or talent or temperament.