"The one thing people are the most liberal with, is their advice."
"Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius."
Henri Frédéric Amiel (28 September 1821 – 11 May 1881) was a Swiss philosopher, poet and critic.
Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor, scientist, and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb.
"Genius does what it must, and talent does what it can."
Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton (25 May 1803 – 18 January 1873) was an English politician, poet, playwright, and prolific novelist. He was immensely popular with the reading public and wrote a stream of bestselling novels which earned him a considerable fortune.
"Genius develops in quiet place, character out in the full current of human life."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German writer and polymath. Goethe is considered by many to be the most important writer in the German language and one of the most important thinkers in Western culture. Goethe's works span the fields of poetry, drama, literature, theology, philosophy, and science. His magnum opus, lauded as one of the peaks of world literature, is the two-part drama Faust.
"Genius begins great works, labor alone finishes them."
Joseph Joubert (7 May 1754 in Montignac, Périgord – 4 May 1824 in Ville) was a French moralist and essayist, remembered today largely for his Pensées published posthumously.
"Sometimes men come by the name of genius in the same way that certain insects come by the name of centipede-not because they have a hundred feet, but because most people can't count above fourteen."
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1 July 1742 – 24 February 1799) was a German scientist, satirist and Anglophile. As a scientist, he was the first to hold a professorship explicitly dedicated to experimental physics in Germany.
"Genius is the ability to act rightly without precedent-the power to do the right thing the first time."
Elbert Green Hubbard (June 19, 1856 – May 7, 1915) was an American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher. He was an influential exponent of the Arts and Crafts movement.
"Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labor in it, but they labor in it because they excel."
William Hazlitt (10 April 1778 – 18 September 1830) was an English writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, and as a grammarian and philosopher. He is now considered one of the great critics and essayists of the English language.
"Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them."
Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a theoretical physicist, philosopher and author who is widely regarded as one of the most influential and best known scientists and intellectuals of all time. A German-Swiss Nobel laureate, he is often regarded as the father of modern physics. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".
"Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe."
Benjamin Disraeli (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881) was a British Prime Minister, parliamentarian, Conservative statesman and literary figure. He served in government for three decades, twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He was the country's first and thus far only Prime Minister who was born Jewish.