Intelligence Quotes
Emerson leads this page, followed by Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Isaac D’Israeli, the American humorist Josh Billings and Simone Weil. For sourced lines there is Disraeli, in Contarini Fleming (1832), saying patience is a necessary ingredient of genius, and Emerson in English Traits (1856), remarking that the hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue.
Three popular lines carry flags. “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent” is credited to Einstein and marked misattributed. A line about the centuries rarely producing a genius, credited to David Lloyd George, is also marked misattributed. William Feather’s remark that happiness and intelligence are so rarely found in the same person is disputed.
He was an instance that a complete genius and a complete rogue can be formed before a man is of age.
Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark.
I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.
From haunted spring and dale
Edged with poplar pale
The parting genius is with sighing sent.
Manner is all in all, whate'er is writ,
The substitute for genius, sense, and wit.
You can do something with talent, but nothing with genius....
Genius is of no country; her pure ray
Spreads all abroad, as general as the day.
It was an idea of pure genius that had suddenly struck her; the genius of common sense.
Greatness is the reward for genius...only a few can be great, the rest are plain good.