Julian Barnes Quotes

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

As the fertilest ground, must be manured, so must the highest flying wit have a Daedalus to guide him.

Genius is talent set on fire by courage.

One of the strongest characteristics of genius is the power of lighting its own fire.

Almost all the noblest things that have been achieved in the world, have been achieved by poor men; poor scholars, poor professional men, poor artisans and artists, poor philosophers, poets, and men of genius.

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.

Let us leave to the brain what belongs to it, and agree that the work of the men of genius is of the superhuman, the offspring of man.

The source of genius is imagination alone.

There is the same difference between talent and genius that there is between a stone mason and a sculptor

Artists are always young.

the distinction between talent and genius is definite. Talent combines and uses; genius combines and creates.

Genius is the accumulated wealth of our humanity--its most intense development concentrated at one point, and then with clearer expression and with mysterious power shot back to us across the galvanic lines of thought and feeling.

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

Talent is a tenant in the house owned by genius.

Humor is one of the elements of genius--admirable as an adjunct; but as soon as it becomes dominant, only a surrogate for genius.

Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is.

Genius is that energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates.

Genius is play, and man's capacity for achieving genius is infinite, and many may achieve genius only through play.

Men of genius are meteors destined to burn themselves out in lighting up their age.

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

What moves those of genius, what inspires their work is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.

Talent is a flame. Genius is a fire.

I have never been an innovator, a creative genius.

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