Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton Quotes About Genius
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Some have the temperament and tastes of genius, without its creative power. They feel acutely, but express tamely.
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The man who succeeds above his fellows is the one who early in life, clearly discerns his object, and towards that object habitually directs his powers. Even genius itself is but fine observation strengthened by fixity of purpose. Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius.
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Common sense is only a modification of talent. Genius is an exaltation of it. The difference is, therefore, in degree, not nature.
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Genius has no brother.
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The most delicate beauty in the mind of women is, and ever must be, an independence of artificial stimulants for content. It is not so with men. The links that bind men to capitals belong to the golden chain of civilization,--the chain which fastens all our destinies to the throne of Jove. And hence the larger proportion of men in whom genius is pre-eminent have preferred to live in cities, though some of them have bequeathed to us the loveliest pictures of the rural scenes in which they declined to dwell.
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The world thinks eccentricity in great things is genius, but in small things, only crazy.
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Talk not of genius baffled. Genius is master of man. Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can.
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Childhood and genius have the same master organ in common - inquisitiveness.
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Could we know by what strange circumstances a man's genius became prepared for practical success, we should discover that the most serviceable items in his education were never entered in the bills which his father paid for.
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Genius is but fine observation strengthened by fixity of purpose.
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Emulation, even in brutes, is sensitively "nervous." See the tremor of the thoroughbred racer before he starts. The dray-horse does not tremble, but he does not emulate. It is not his work to run a race. Says Marcus Antoninus, "It is all one to a stone whether it be thrown upward or downward." Yet the emulation of a man of genius is seldom with his contemporaries, that is, inwardly in his mind, although outwardly in his act it would seem so. The competitors with whom his secret ambition seems to vie are the dead.
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Every man who observes vigilantly, and resolves steadfastly, grows unconsciously into genius.
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Genius, the Pythian of the beautiful, leaves its large truths a riddle to the dull.
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Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity and truth accomplishes no victories without it
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A man of genius is inexhaustible only in proportion as he is always renourishing his genius.
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Men of strong affections are jealous of their own genius. They fear lest they should be loved for a quality, and not for themselves.
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Genius in the poet, like the nomad of Arabia, ever a wanderer, still ever makes a home where the well or the palm-tree invites it to pitch the tent. Perpetually passing out of himself and his own positive circumstantial condition of being into other hearts and into other conditions, the poet obtains his knowledge of human life by transporting his own life into the lives of others.
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Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
- Born: May 25, 1803
- Died: January 18, 1873
- Occupation: Novelist