James Russell Lowell Quotes

Genius gives birth, talent delivers.

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

Great genial power, one would almost say, consists in not being original at all; in being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind.

Theories of genius are the peculiar constructions of our own philosophical times; ages of genius had passed away, and they left no other record than their works; no preconcerted theory described the workings of the imagination to be without imagination, nor did they venture to teach how to invent invention.

Of course creativity is a mystery. We don't know what drives it or what constitutes it. It's one of those things, like genius, you know it when you see it but it's impossible to define.

Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.

What is genius but the power of expressing a new individuality?

Nature is the master of talents; genius is the master of nature.

Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

Upper berth, lower berth, that's the difference between talent and genius.

Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.

In the creative industries, there are few things more exciting than a zinger - a thought, idea, line, plot device - anything really, that just totally works in a fundamentally new and fresh way. It's like a uniquely lovely melody or a new taste idea in cooking. Something special, something new, something wonderful. They're also very rare.

Genius is not perfected, it is deepened. It does not so much interpret the world as fertilize itself with it.

I have never been an innovator, a creative genius.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

A genius is someone with the ability to come up with ideas that are new, surprising and valuable.

Frank Ocean would be incredible; I'd love to be a sponge and absorb everything he says. Every song he puts out, I'm like, 'Why didn't I think of this?'

The incompatibility of aquacity with the erratic originality of genius.

Talent may frolic and juggle; genius realizes and adds.

Genius resembles a bell; in order to ring it must be suspended into pure air, and when a foreign body touches it, its joyful toneis silenced.

The inconsistency of genius is a consistent theme of creativity.

I love to create magic - to put something together that's so unusual, so unexpected that it blows people's heads off. Something ahead of the times. Five steps ahead of what people are thinking.

This is the highest miracle of genius, that things which are not should be as though they were, that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another.

That was the very centre of his genius - he invented things that anyone could have thought of, and men who can invent things that anyone could have thought of are very rare men.