Charles Henry Parkhurst Quotes

Genius is, to be sure, not a matter of arbitrariness, but rather of freedom, just as wit, love, and faith, which once shall become arts and disciplines. We should demand genius from everybody, without, however, expecting it.

One must indeed be ignorant of the methods of genius to suppose that it allows itself to be cramped by forms. Forms are for mediocrity, and it is fortunate that mediocrity can act only according to routine. Ability takes its flight unhindered.

The first thing a genius needs is to breath free air.

Giving calls for genius.

Genius is play, and man's capacity for achieving genius is infinite, and many may achieve genius only through play.

Genius is rarely able to give any account of its own processes.

I don't follow any system. All the laws you can lay down are only so many props to be cast aside when the hour of creation arrives.

One of the strongest characteristics of genius is the power of lighting its own fire.

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.

Rules and models destroy genius and art.

Nature is the master of talents; genius is the master of nature.

Talent does whatever it wants to do. Genius does only what it can.

Is it not in the most absolute simplicity that real genius plies its pinions the most wonderfully?

The principle mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.

Talent does what it can; genius does what it must.

Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind.

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

The American people ... have a stake in con-conformity, for they know that the American genius is non-conformist.

I actually found not having a routine was inspiration.

Whatever you think can’t be done, somebody will come along and do it. A genius is the one most like himself.

Talent may frolic and juggle; genius realizes and adds.

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

Talent warms-up the given (as they say in cookery) and makes it apparent; genius brings something new. But our time lets talent pass for genius. They want to abolish the genius, deify the genius, and let talent forge ahead.

... the genius never makes anything new, but always something that is just different, and the average talents provide him the possibility within which his genius condenses into achievements.

To create one must be able to respond. Creativity is the ability to respond to all that goes on around us, to choose from the hundreds of possibilities of though, feeling, action, and reaction and to put these together in a unique response, expression or message that carries moment, passion and meaning. In this sense, loss of our creative milieu means finding ourselves limited to only one choice, divested of, suppressing, or cendoring feelings and thoughts, not acting, not saying, doing, or being.