This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
The finest gift you can give anyone is encouragement. Yet, almost no one gets the encouragement they need to grow to their full potential. If everyone received the encouragement they need to grow, the genius in most everyone would blossom and the world would produce abundance beyond the wildest dreams.
An idiot repeats his mistakes. A smart man learns from his mistakes. But a genius learns from the mistakes of others.
When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him.
Virtue is as little to be acquired by learning as genius; nay, the idea is barren, and is only to be employed as an instrument, in the same way as genius in respect to art. It would be as foolish to expect that our moral and ethical systems would turn out virtuous, noble, and holy beings, as that our aesthetic systems would produce poets, painters and musicians.
Aesthetic | Art | Genius | Learning | Little | Respect | Virtue | Virtue | Respect |
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
Genius |
Compared with the short span of time they live, men of great intellect are like huge buildings, standing on a small plot of ground. The size of the building cannot be seen by anyone, just in front of it; nor, for an analogous reason, can the greatness of a genius be estimated while he lives. but when a century has passed, the world recognizes it and wishes him back again.
Genius | Greatness | Men | Reason | Size | Time | Wishes | World | Intellect |
Compared with the short span of time they live, men of great intellect are like huge buildings, standing on a small plot of ground. The size of the building cannot be seen by anyone, just in front of it; nor, for an analogous reason, can the greatness of a genius be estimated while he lives. But when a century has passed, the world recognizes it and wishes him back again.
Genius | Greatness | Men | Reason | Size | Time | Wishes | World | Intellect |
The emergence of a superman or a great mystic or a genius or a superior personality inevitably precipitates a social conflict. The conflict will be more or less acute, according to the degree in which the creative individual happens to rise above the average level of his former kin and kind. But some conflict is inevitable, since the social equilibrium which the genius has upset by the mere fact of his personal emergence has eventually to be restored either by his social triumph or by his social defeat.
Defeat | Genius | Individual | Inevitable | Personality | Will |
An idiot repeats his mistakes. A smart man learns from his mistakes. But a genius learns from the mistakes of others.
Mediocrity can talk; but it is for genius to observe.
Genius | Mediocrity |
A brand new mediocrity is thought more of than accustomed excellence.
Excellence | Mediocrity | Thought | Thought |
Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.
Enthusiasm | Genius |
To sentence a man of true genius to the drudgery of a school is put a racehorse in a mill.
To be a genius is to achieve complete possession of one's own experience, body, rhythm, and memories.
Body | Experience | Genius |
Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance.
Acquaintance | Genius | Moderation | Wisdom |