A Quote by Ludwig Wittgenstein

Genius is talent in which character makes itself heard.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Quote Topics

Character Genius Heard Itself Makes Talent Which

Quote Author

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Austrian - Philosopher
April 26, 1889 - April 29, 1951

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

The difference between Talent and Genius is that Talent says things which he has never heard but once, and Genius things which he has never heard.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Ouida

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

To carry feelings of childhood into the powers of adulthood, to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which every day for years has rendered familiar, this is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks which distinguish it from talent.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning's flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself.

Henry David Thoreau

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

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

Edwin Percy Whipple

There is in the DNA of the Italians a bit of madness, which in the overwhelming majority of cases is positive. It is genius. It is talent. It's the masterpieces of art. It's the food, fashion, everything that makes Italy great in the world.

Matteo Renzi

The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief. Talent is mistaken for genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatness, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fine taste is an aspect of genius itself, and is the faculty of delicate appreciation, which makes the best effects of art our own.

Nathaniel Parker Willis

Genius is what makes us forget the master's talent.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.

Arthur Conan Doyle

In sheer genius Pascal ranks among the very greatest writers who have lived upon this earth. And his genius was not simply artistic; it displayed itself no less in his character and in the quality of his thought.