Robertson Davies Quotes

Genius is only a greater aptitude for patience.

You can do something with talent, but nothing with genius.

Talent is the ability to say things well, but genius is the ability to, well, say things.

People of genius do not excel in any profession because they work in it, they work in it because they excel.

Nothing is so envied as genius, nothing so hopeless of attainment by labor alone. Though labor always accompanies the greatest genius, without the intellectual gift labor alone will do little.

Other people - they practice and they practice... these fingers of mine, they got brains in 'em. You don't tell them what to do - they do it. God given talent.

I have never considered myself a prodigy. Others have used that term, but I never bought in to it.

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

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.

Genius is what makes us forget the master's talent.

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

I think the people that are best at something, they don't think about it much. That's the whole key to being good at anything.

Connor Broekhart was born to fly, or more accurately he was born flying.

A genius is somebody who seemingly just reaches out of nowhere.

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

The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.

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.

Any complex activity, if it is to be carried on with any degree of virtuosity, calls for appropriate gifts of intellect and temperament. If they are outstanding and reveal themselves in exceptional achievements, their possessor is called a 'genius'.

I have great appreciation for people who do anything well. I think that it's very difficult to do what you do well.

Talent is a tenant in the house owned by genius.

Do you know how some people can do anything?” “What do you mean?” “I mean, you tell them to write a tune, they give you a symphony right there. You tell them to write a book, they write you a novel in a day. You tell them to move a spoon without touching it, they move it. If they want something, they make it happen. Miracles, almost.

For I think it is the case with genius that it is not when quiescent so very much above mediocrity as the difference between the two might lead us to think, but that it has the power and privilege of rising from that level to a height utterly far from mediocrity: in other words that its greatness is that it can be so great.

To me, mathematics is like playing the violin. Some people can do it - others can't. If you don't have it, then there's no point in pretending.

You may have genius. The contrary is, of course, probable.

To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent.