Louis Aragon Quotes

Men of genius are not be analyzed by commonplace rules.

Thomas Fuller, known as the Virginia Calculator, was stolen from his native Africa at the age of fourteen and sold to a planter. When he was about seventy years old, 'two gentlemen, natives of Pennsylvania, viz., William Hartshorne and Samuel Coates, men of probity and respectable characters, having heard, in traveling through the neighborhood in which the slave lived, of his extraordinary powers in arithmetic, sent for him and had their curiosity sufficiently gratified by the answers which he gave to the following questions: First, Upon being asked how many seconds there were in a year and a half, he answered in about two minutes, 47,304,000. Second: On being asked how many seconds a man has lived who is 70 years, 17 days and 12 hours old, he answered in a minute and a half 2,210,500,800. One of the gentlemen who employed himself with his pen in making these calculations told him he was wrong, and the sum was not so great as he had said—upon which the old man hastily replied: stop, master, you forget the leap year. On adding the amount of the seconds of the leap years the amount of the whole in both their sums agreed exactly.

Geniuses are commonly believed to excel other men in their power of sustained attention . . . But it is their genius making them attentive, not their attention making geniuses of them.

There are very few really brilliant men who have not had at least one madman among their ancestors.

It is to the eccentrics that the world owes most of its knowledge.

Geniuses must never die, the progress of mankind depends on us

The whole difference between a man of genius and other men, it has been said a thousand times, and most truly, is that the first remains in great part a child, seeing with the large eyes of children, in perpetual wonder, not conscious of much knowledge--conscious, rather of infinite ignorance, and yet infinite power; a fountain of eternal admiration, delight, and creative force within him meeting the ocean of visible and governable things around him.

As monarchs have a right to call in the specie of a state, and raise its value, by their own impression; so are there certain prerogative geniuses, who are above plagiaries, who cannot be said to steal, but, from their improvement of a thought, rather to borrow it, and repay the commonwealth of letters with interest again; and may wore properly be said to adopt, than to kidnap a sentiment, by leaving it heir to their own fame.

If you get the you-are-a-genius label, it can limit you. Because I'm not so scrutinized, I have more freedom. And that let's me write what I want.

Genius, as an explosive power, beats gunpowder hollow.

I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, - that is genius.

Writing fiction, especially a long work of fiction, can be a difficult, lonely job; it's like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There's plenty of opportunity for self-doubt.

Men of genius are not to be analysed by commonplace rules. The rest of us who have been or are leaders, more commonplace in our quality, will do well to remember two things. One is never to forget posterity when devising a policy. The other is never to think of posterity when making a speech.

Let none presume to measure the irregularities of Michael Angelo or Socrates by village scales.

It is strange that only extraordinary men make the discoveries, which later appear so easy and simple.

Mankind must work continually to produce individual great human beings - this and nothing else is the task... for the question is this : How can your life, the individual life, retain the highest value, the deepest significance? Only by living for the good of the rarest and most valuable specimens.

But in this world of morally-warped phenomena there are rare and happy exceptions of truly great magnitude, which always pay dearly for their exclusiveness and fall a prey to their own superiority. Natures of genius, themselves unaware of their genius, they are relentlessly killed by an unconscious society as an expiatory sacrifice to its own sins … Such is Pushkin’s Tatiana.

The power of applying attention, steady and undissipated, to a single object, is the sure mark of superior genius.

Those who 'cursed the day they were born' must have been infant prodigies.

Genius speaks only to genius.

The individuals who seem to us most outstanding, who are honored with the name of genius, are those who have proposed to enact the fate of all humanity in their personal existences.

We may divide thinkers into those who think for themselves and those who think through others. The latter are the rule and the former the exception. The first are original thinkers in a double sense, and egotists in the noblest meaning of the word.

If, by chance, someone among those men of extraordinary talent is found who has firmness of soul and who refuses to yield to the genius of his age and to debase himself with childish works, woe unto him! He will die in poverty and oblivion.

If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his superiority perish with his bodily frame.

Uncommon men require no common trust; give him but scope and he will set the bounds.