Phillips Brooks Quotes

... Geniuses have a little extra something. There's that little something that you know is a little different.

There's a stark difference between the words 'prodigy' and 'genius.' Prodigies can very quickly learn what other people have already figured out; geniuses discover that which no one has ever previously discovered. Prodigies learn; geniuses do.

Since that day, when people have spoken to me of "genius", I have felt the inside pocket to make sure my wallet's still there.

That brain of mine is something more than merely mortal, as time will show.

I know people I feel are extremely talented, but I don't know that I've ever heard any geniuses.

A genius is someone with the ability to come up with ideas that are new, surprising and valuable.

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

For what we are about to see next, we must enter quietly into the realm of genius!

Some were brilliant bordering on genius. Others, genius bordering on madness

The only term I won't accept is "genius."

The proportion of genius to the vulgar is like one to a million.

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.

There has not been any great talent without an element of madness. -Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit

Perhaps only a Genius can truly understand Genius.

What is genius? It is the power to be a boy again at will.

A genius is a mentally ill person with an audience

There has never been any great genius without a spice of madness.

Genius is another word for magic.

Genius of the highest kind implies an unusual intensity of the modifying power.

Genius declares itself to be a kind of higher masculinity.

Some people come by the name of genius in the same way that certain insects come by the name of centipede -- not because they have a hundred feet, but because most people can't count above 14.

The big characters who occupy science, especially modern science, are all "off" in fundamental ways. I don't think that genius goes hand in hand with being socially inept or being a sociopath or being a misanthrope, but I do think that it is a mind that can think so differently - so beyond how one is supposed to think. I wanted to pay tribute to that mind.

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.

I know of no such thing as genius, genius is nothing but labor and diligence.

Men of the greatest genius are not always the most prodigal of their encomiums. But then it is when their range of power is confined, and they have in fact little perception, except of their own particular kind of excellence.