Mary Hunter Austin Quotes

The definition of genius, really, should be that that person can do what the rest of us have to learn how to do.

Neither can we admit that definition of genius that some would propose--"a power to accomplish all that we undertake;" for we might multiply examples to prove that this definition of genius contains more than the thing defined. Cicero failed in poetry, Pope in painting, Addison in oratory; yet it would be harsh to deny genius to these men.

I regret that I must so continually use the word genius, as if that should apply only to a caste as well defined from those below as income-tax payers are from the untaxed. The word genius was very probably invented by a man who had small claims on it himself; greater men would have understood better what to be a genius really was, and probably they would have come to see that the word could be applied to most people. Goethe said that perhaps only a genius is able to understand a genius.

The thing that most people call 'genius' I do not believe in.

Genius is independent of situation.

Humor is really one of the hardest things to define, very hard. And it's very ambiguous. You have it, or you don't. You can't attain it.

What we don't understand we can make mean anything.

David Milch is one of the smartest human beings I've ever met. I'm relatively bright and relatively well-read. I'm not in a league with that guy.

Talent is some one faculty unusually developed; genius commands all the faculties.

A man of genius is unbearable, unless he possesses at least two things besides: gratitude and purity.

The best minds come from the most unexpected faces and places. There is no image for intelligence or genius. Genius is something that cannot be seen. It cannot be produced or manufactured. It is something that even the true genius thinks is unattainable. The genius recognizes he’s just a small pea in a sea of infinite atoms. Knowledge is as infinite as the universe. The man who claims to know all, only reveals to all that he really knows nothing.

Real talent is a mystery, and people who've got it, know it.

when you think you've got hold of a genius ... you can't be sure whether it's a spark of the divine fire or a mere flash in the pan.

We measure genius by quality, not by quantity.

No one knows anything for sure.

There is the same difference between talent and genius that there is between a stone mason and a sculptor

Common sense is only a modification of talent. Genius is an exaltation of it. The difference is, therefore, in degree, not nature.

Who will dare say he has defined art?

True genius walks along a line, and, perhaps, our greatest pleasure is in seeing it so often near falling, without being ever actually down.

A novelist is on the cusp between someone who knows everything and someone who knows nothing.

Any work that is really great hovers between terrific and terrible.

Certainly, you know, you can always learn from some - from somebody else's - from some intelligence. I think. I hope.

I will write a book one day about how I feel about every aspect of Emily Stone. She's a full genius. She has found her genius and is giving it all so fully and beautifully. I think everyone who works with her, brushes shoulders with her, or even makes eye contact with her, gets a shot of sunshine.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is the only musician who had as much knowledge asgenius, and as much genius as knowledge.