A Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Genius is its own end.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Quote Topics

End Genius Own

Quote Author

Ralph Waldo Emerson
American - Philosopher
May 25, 1803 - April 27, 1882

Genius is its own reward; for the best that one is, one must necessarily be for oneself. . . . Further, genius consists in the working of the free intellect., and as a consequence the productions of genius serve no useful purpose. The work of genius may be music, philosophy, painting, or poetry; it is nothing for use or profit. To be useless and unprofitable is one of the characteristics of genius; it is their patent of nobility.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Universality is the distinguishing mark of genius. There is no such thing as a special genius, a genius for mathematics, or for music, or even for chess, but only a universal genius. The genius is a man who knows everything without having learned it.

Otto Weininger

There are no rules. You can write a story, if you wish, with no conflict, no suspense, no beginning, middle or end. Of course, you have to be regarded as a genius to get away with it, and that's the hardest part - convincing everybody you're a genius.

Fredric Brown

As it must not, so genius cannot be lawless; for it is even that constitutes its genius - the power of acting creatively under laws of its own origination.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

But in this world of morally-warped phenomena there are rare and happy exceptions of truly great magnitude, which always pay dearly for their exclusiveness and fall a prey to their own superiority. Natures of genius, themselves unaware of their genius, they are relentlessly killed by an unconscious society as an expiatory sacrifice to its own sins … Such is Pushkin’s Tatiana.

Vissarion Belinsky

What is it men love in Genius, but its infinite hope, which degrades all it has done? Genius counts all its miracles poor and short. Its own idea it never executed.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Genius is answerable only to itself; it is the sole judge of the means, since it alone knows the end; thus genius must consider itself as above the law, for it is the task of genius to remake the law; moreover the man who frees himself from his time and place may take everything, hazard everything, for everything is his by right.

Honore de Balzac

Talent finds its models, methods, and ends in society, exists for exhibition, and goes to the soul only for power to work. Genius is its own end, and draws its means and the style of its architecture from within.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Oh, I'm not a true genius. I'm a near genius. I would say I'm a short genius. I'd rather be tall and normal than a short genius.

Mel Brooks

So far from genius discarding law, rather is it the supreme joy of genius to re-enact the eternal and unwritten law in the chamber of its own intel-lect.

Charles Henry Parkhurst

I actually think that I'm a genius; not to toot my own horn or anything, but I think I'm a musical genius.

O. T. Genasis

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

In Oakland, Al Davis was a genius. We had Ron Wolff there, too, and he was a genius. There was no room for me to be a genius.

John Madden

If it turns out that the Mayans are right and the world is going to end, you know what this means? Lindsay Lohan is a genius. She's been partying her brains out. She owes taxes. She’s crashing cars. She’s a genius!

Jay Leno

Either I'm a genius or I'm mad, which is it? "No," I said, "I can't be mad because nobody's put me away; therefore I'm a genius." Genius is a form of madness and we're all that way. But I used to be coy about it, like me guitar playing. But if there's such a thing as genius - I am one. And if there isn't, I don't care.