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Genius resembles a bell; in order to ring it must be suspended into pure air, and when a foreign body touches it, its joyful tone is silenced.

— Franz Grillparzer Notebooks and Diaries (1809)

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Intelligence

More quotes by Franz Grillparzer

I love the pride whose measure is its own eminence and not the insignificance of someone else.

The irreligious are more religious than they themselves know, and the religious are less so than they think.

Aphorism (1857)

He is like all the rest: a slave to profit, a master only to his bent for negotiating the best deal.

Libussa (1872)

When mundane, lowly activities are at stake, too much insight is detrimental—far-sightedness errs in immediate concerns.

Let the will embrace the highest ideals freely and with infinite strength, but let action first take hold of what lies closest.

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Each of these private teachers who work for pay ... inculcates nothing else than these opinions of the multitude which they opine when they are assembled and calls this knowledge wisdom.

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Most intellectual people do not believe in God, but they fear him just the same.

Wilhelm Reich Philosophy : An Introduction to the Art of Wondering (2005)

Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël De l’Allemagne [Germany (1813)

Like every 'intellectual', a philosophy teacher is a petty bourgeois. When he opens his mouth, it is petty-bourgeois ideology that speaks: its resources and ruses are infinite.

Louis Althusser Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1968)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Franz Grillparzer (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.