For me, Bach is like Shakespeare. He has known all and felt all. He is everything.
Universality is the distinguishing mark of genius. There is no such thing as a special genius, a genius for mathematics, or for music, or even for chess, but only a universal genius. The genius is a man who knows everything without having learned it.
The term 'renaissance man' is always bandied about. I don't think that applies to me. You think about Leonardo da Vinci, and he was a painter and a physicist and an architect, and that is a true renaissance man.
No nation has produced anything like his equal. There is no quality in the human mind, there is no class of topics, there is no region of thought, in which he has not soared or descended, and none in which he has not said the commanding word.
Arts and sciences in one and the same century have arrived at great perfection; and no wonder, since every age has a kind of universal genius, which inclines those that live in it to some particular studies; the work then, being pushed on by many hands, must go forward.
Did you know that da Vinci was a painter, polymath, engineer, architect, biologist, and writer all rolled into one? He drew sketches of helicopters at a time when they weren't even invented!
When a man has displayed talent in some particular path, and left all competitors behind him in it, the world are too apt to give him credit for universality of genius, and to anticipate for him success in all that he undertakes.
Genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.
Genius everywhere is one. In the Orient and in the Occident the deep thinkers are kin, the poets are cousins, the pioneers of the spirit are the messengers of peace and good will to the world. Their works are the open highways between nations, and they themselves are the ever living guardians and guides.
Actually I like the idea of being a Renaissance hack. If tombstones were still in style, I would want to have the two words chiseled right under my name.
Every age has a kind of universal genius, which inclines those that live in it to some particular studies.
The real wonder is not that one man should be a genius, but that every man should not be.
Genius is of no country; her pure ray Spreads all abroad, as general as the day.
This is one of those instances in which the individual genius is found to consent, as indeed it always does, at last, with the universal.
