genius - A person with outstanding talent, especially one whose cognitive or creative skills or achievements gain fame. The outstanding talent itself.

An image of genius:

Benjamin West (American, 1738-1820), Genius Calling Forth the Fine Arts to Adorn Manufactures and Commerce, 1789, oil on paper mounted on canvas, 19 3/8 x 24 5/8 inches (49.5 x 62.3 cm), Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA.

• "Men of genius sometimes accomplish most when they work the least, for they are thinking out inventions and forming in their minds the perfect idea that htey subsequently express with their hands."
  Attributed to Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Italian Renaissance artist, etc. Giorgio Vasari.
  
  
• "Invention is one of the great marks of genius, but if we consult experience, we shall find, that it is by being conversant with the inventions of others, that we learn to invent: as by reading the thoughts of others we learn to think."
  Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), English painter, art writer, and the first president of the Royal Academy, Discourses on Art, 1769-1790.
  
  
• "Men of genius have a way utterly peculiar to themselves of seeing things."
  Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), French Romantic painter, The Journals of Eugène Delacroix, translated by Walter Pach, 1937. See Romanticism.
  
  
• "What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough."
  Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), French Romantic painter, May 15, 1824, in Delacroix by Phoebe Pool, 1969.
  
  
• "Genius is one percent inspiration, and ninety-nine percent perspiration."
  Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931), American inventor of the light bulb, the record player, motion picture and other technologies. Life, 1932, chapter 24. See inspiration.
  
  
• "Genius is not a possession of the limited few, but exists in some degree in everyone. Where there is natural growth, a full and free play of faculties, genius will manifest itself."
  Robert Henri (1865-1929), American painter, and member of The Eight and the Ashcan School, The Art Spirit, 1923. See The Eight.
  
  
• "It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing really doing nothing."
  Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), American writer. Everybody's Autobiography, 1937.
  
  
• "It [genius] is personality with a penny's worth of talent. Error which chances to rise above the commonplace."
  Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish artist. Quoted in: Jaime Sabartés, Picasso: portraits et souvenirs, ch. 9 (1946). See Cubism.
  
  
• "One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius."
  Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), French writer, existentialist, and feminist, In the Woman's Eye, 1973. See feminism and feminist art.
  
  
• "One cannot explain the existence of genius. It is better to enjoy it."
  Ernst H. Gombrich (1909-2001), British art historian. The Story of Art, 1950.
  
  
• "Once you had to be a genius to make works of art. Now you have to be a genius to understand them."
  Roy Emmins (1939-), British [?].
  
  
• " Q. 'You hate the language that's used to describe art. What's wrong with words like masterpiece, seminal and genius?
  Tina Modotti: 'The word genius is related to the Latin word for testicles. Maybe that explains why it's so rarely used to describe a woman.' "
  Tina Modotti was an Italian photographer (1896-1942). The person quoted here is not that artist, but is instead a member of the Guerrilla Girls (American, a contemporary feminist group founded in 1985), who uses the name Tina Modotti when interviewed. From an interview in Confessions of the Guerrilla Girls, 1995. See masterpiece and seminal.

Also see creativity, effort, epistemology, knowledge, masterpiece, memory, mind, multiple intelligence theory, praise, publicity, and talent.

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