Thomas Love Peacock Quotes

All kids are born geniuses, but are crushed by society.

Every man is a potential genius until he does something.

In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.

I probably have genius. But no talent.

Nothing is harmful to literature except censorship, and that almost never stops literature going where it wants to go either, because literature has a way of surpassing everything that blocks it and growing stronger for the exercise.

Young men and young women, full of courage, originality, and genius, are everywhere to be met with.

Why must we be eternally on our knees before the Kants and Hugos?

Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them.

If people aren't creating literature, there would be nothing for people to criticize.

In the old days of literature, only the very thick-skinned - or the very brilliant - dared enter the arena of literary criticism. To criticise a person's work required equal measures of erudition and wit, and inferior critics were often the butt of satire and ridicule.

My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine - everybody drinks water.

The problem with Ireland is that it's a country full of genius, but with absolutely no talent.

Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.

Mr. James Joyce is a great man who is entirely without taste.

Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never.

Reviewers are usually people who would have been, poets, historians, biographer, if they could. They have tried their talents at one thing or another and have failed; therefore they turn critic.

Could I have chosen my own genius, I should have made myself a great poet.

It would be a dangerous undertaking for persons trained only to the law to constitute themselves final judges of the worth of [a work], outside of the narrowest and most obvious limits. At the one extreme some works of genius would be sure to miss appreciation. Their very novelty would make them repulsive until the public had learned the new language in which their author spoke.

'The Satanic Verses' was denied the ordinary life of a novel. It became something smaller and uglier: an insult.

Oh, I'm impressed with Lorraine Hansberry. She was a genius at whose feet I could sit.

The imprisoning of a writer is the same as the burning of a book.

I was taught Shakespeare brilliantly by an eccentric genius at Harrow named Jeremy Lemmon who made me want to be a writer.

Even if censorship might encourage creative ways to circumvent it, it still slows down progress and our ability to realise our full creative potential. And that is why I vehemently fight against it.

Every age might perhaps produce one or two geniuses, if they were not sunk under the censure and obloquy of plodding, servile, imitating pedants.

Genius gives birth, talent delivers.