Knut Hamsun Quotes

Nobody told me I was a child prodigy.

Every man is a potential genius until he does something.

I probably have genius. But no talent.

By and large, talent is in such short supply that mediocrity can be taken for brilliance rather more than genius can go undiscovered.

Everybody is so talented nowadays that the only people I care to honor as deserving real distinction are those who remain in obscurity.

The appearance of a single great genius is more than equivalent to the birth of a hundred mediocrities.

There is a sacred horror about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills; but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling.

The world knows nothing of its greatest men.

Men of genius are not be analyzed by commonplace rules.

Genius does not herd with genius.

Only once in a thousand years or so do we get to hear a Mozart or see a Picasso or read a Shakespeare. Ali was one of them, and yet at his heart, he was still a kid from Louisville who ran with the gods and walked with the crippled and smiled at the foolishness of it all.

I was actually not some sort of a child prodigy by any stretch.

Most of those whom we honor on Memorial Day died young. They never had the chance to raise a family, build a career, attend the weddings of their children, or be honored in old age.

…because talent isn't genius, and no amount of energy can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing.

when you think you've got hold of a genius ... you can't be sure whether it's a spark of the divine fire or a mere flash in the pan.

None of the arts are any good unless you really are great at them.

There's nothing wrong with being a genius who can fascinate the young. Rather, there's something wrong with the young who can't be fascinated by a genius.

Some superior minds are unrecognized because there is no standard by which to weigh them.

The very greatest genius, after all, is not the greatest thing in the world, any more than the greatest city in the world is the country or the sky. It is the concentration of some of its greatest powers, but it is not the greatest diffusion of its might. It is not the habit of its success, the stability of its sereneness.

What is Genius?- To aspire to a lofty aim and to will the means to that aim.

Men of genius are far more abundant than is supposed. In fact, to appreciate thoroughly the work of what we call genius, is to possess all the genius by which the work was produced.

...That genius is a rare exception (:) It's not true. Talent and genius have been wasted on enormous scale throughout our history; this is all I know for sure.

This isn’t a game. We don’t want mediocre employees who can keep the status quo. We want souls. We want to win. And you’ve spent most of your time here being mediocre.

True genius walks along a line, and, perhaps, our greatest pleasure is in seeing it so often near falling, without being ever actually down.

There is no more dreary or more repulsive creature than the man who has evaded his genius.