Joshua Reynolds Quotes

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

Upper berth, lower berth, that's the difference between talent and genius.

Some people have just got a capacity for creativity that's unbelievable!

Genius is a bend in the creek where bright water has gathered, and which mirrors the trees, the sky and the banks. It just does that because it is there and the scenery is there. Talent is a fine mirror with a silver frame, with the name of the owner engraved on the back.

Talent is the capacity of doing anything that depends on application and industry and it is a voluntary power, while genius is involuntary.

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.

Works of genius are the first things in the world.

Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will.

If you study a great work of art, you'll probably find the artist was a kind of genius. And geniuses are different to you and me.

Be a good craftsman; it won't stop you from being a genius.

Beerbohm was a genius of the purest kind. He stands at the summit of his art.

As it must not, so genius cannot be lawless; for it is even that constitutes its genius - the power of acting creatively under laws of its own origination.

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.

The stigma of oddness is the price a myopic world always exacts of genius.

Persons of genius, and those who are most capable of art, are always most fond of nature: as such are chiefly sensible, that all art consists in the imitation and study of nature.

Peter had a genius for imitation; but he lacked true genius, which is creative and makes all from nothing.

The Painter who seeks popularity in Art closes the door upon his own genius.

There is nothing so remote from vanity as true genius. It is almost as natural for those who are endowed with the highest powers of the human mind to produce the miracles of art, as for other men to breathe or move. Correggio, who is said to have produced some of his divinest works almost without having seen a picture, probably did not know that he had done anything extraordinary.

A writer writes with his genius; an artist paints with hers; everyone who creates operates from this sacramental center.

A genius is a mentally ill person with an audience

Genius is inconsiderate, self-relying, and, like unconscious beauty, without any intention to please.

There is a fine line between insanity and genius.

Inspiration and genius -one and the same.

Society develops wit, but its contemplation alone forms genius.