Talent Quotes
Most popular talent quotes
Enthusiasm is more important to mastery than innate ability, it turns out, because the single most important element in developing an expertise is your willingness to practice.
Society affects to estimate men by their talents, but really feels and knows them by their character.
Common sense is only a modification of talent. Genius is an exaltation of it. The difference is, therefore, in degree, not nature.
Genius is the gold in the mine; talent is the miner who works and brings it out.
Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is.
Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better.
It is not the man of great native talent who wins, but he who pushes his talent, however small, to its utmost capacity.
There were times when it was said that I had more determination than talent. This may be said of many. It may also be said that life loves the person who dares to live it.
When a man guards his gift and doesn't do his work, he doesn't fulfill his mandate and remains primitive; when he is overly enthusiastic about his work, he forgets his gift and creates a constructivist ethic: he believes everything is the fruit of his own hands and that there is no gift.
Everyone has talent; what is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.
To do what others cannot do is talent. To do what talent cannot do is genius.
Talent is a flame. Genius is a fire.
No one can arrive from being talented alone. God gives talent; work transforms talent into genius.
Discipline is the refining fire by which talent becomes ability.
The luck of having talent is not enough; one must also have a talent for luck.
What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it; what another would have written as well, do not write it. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself-and thus make yourself indispensable.
The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet.
Nothing I do can't be done by a ten-year-old...with fifteen years of practice.
People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.
It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.
Talent does what it can; genius does what it must.
There are two kinds of talents, man-made talent and God-given talent. With man-made talent you have to work very hard. With God-given talent, you just touch it up once in a while.
Talent wins out.
Keep your talent in the dark, and you'll never be insulted.
A man possesses talent; genius possesses the man.
Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.
I have always thought that the surest proof of talent is its condescension to genius.
I began to ration my writing, for fear I would dream through life as my father had done. I was afraid I had inherited a poisoned gene from him, a vocation without a gift.
There is no substitute for talent. Industry and all its virtues are of no avail.
Neither cast ye your pearls before swine.
After my screen test, the director clapped his hands gleefully and yelled, She can't talk! She can't act! She's sensational!
We've all been blessed with God-given talents. Mine just happens to be beating people up.
Hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy.
Achievement is talent plus preparation.
Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.
If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work...as the soldier flings himself into the enemy's trenches, and if, once in this crater, he does not work like a miner...he is simply looking on at the suicide of his own talent.
The artist uses the talent he has, wishing he had more talent. The talent uses the artist it has, wishing it had more artist.
The barriers are not erected which can say to aspiring talents and industry, "Thus far and no farther."
In this world people have to pay an extortionate price for any exceptional gift whatever.
Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.
I am convinced that, except in a few extraordinary cases, one form or another of an unhappy childhood is essential to the formation of exceptional gifts.
A great deal of talent is lost to the world for the want of a little courage.
We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.
Discipline and constant work are the whetstones upon which the dull knife of talent is honed until it becomes sharp enough, hopefully, to cut through even the toughest meat and gristle.
A man who fears ridicule will never go far, for good or ill: he remains on this side of his talents, and even if he has genius, he is doomed to mediocrity.
If you're born with a gift, to behave like it's an achievement is not right.
When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip; and the whip is intended solely for self-flagellation.
Your minds are endowed with a vast number of gifts of totally different uses—limbs of mind as it were, which, if you don't exercise, you cripple.
There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long.
An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it.
Ideas are a capital that bears interest only in the hands of talent.
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius.
Patience is an integral part of talent.
For every talent that poverty has stimulated, it has blighted a hundred.
We don't choose our talents; but we needn't hide them in a napkin because they are not just what we want.
Every person is born with a talent, and happiness depends on discovering that talent in time.
It is indeed the temptation of all talent to subordinate things to itself and not itself to things.
Talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it.
Talent is like a faucet; while it is open, one must write.
It takes little talent to see clearly what lies under one's nose, a good deal of it to know in which direction to point that organ.
There are two kinds of talent, man-make talent and God-given talent. With man-made talent you have to work very hard. With God-given talent, you just touch it up once in a while.
Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance.
Talent is only a starting point in this business.
All our talents increase in the using, and every faculty, both good and bad, strengthens by exercise.
Talented people almost always know full well the excellence that is in them.
Talent is the multiplier. The more energy and attention you invest in it, the greater the yield. The time you spend with your best [employees] is, quite simply, your most productive time.
As to great and commanding talents, they are the gift of Providence in some way unknown to us, they rise where they are least expected; they fail when everything seems disposed to produce them, or at least to call them forth.
Talent is worshipped; but, if divorced from rectitude, it will prove more of a demon than a god.
Every form of talent involves a certain shamelessness.
The greatest evil which fortune can inflict on men is to endow them with small talents and great ambitions.
The possession of superior talent creates more wishes than it gratifies.
Everybody has talent at twenty-five. The difficult thing is to have it at fifty.
Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him.
Talent for talent's sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.
A true talent delights the possessor first.
If you have a talent, use it in every way possible. Don't hoard it. Don't dole it out like a miser. Spend it lavishly like a millionaire intent on going broke.
Hide not your talents, they for use were made, What's a sun-dial in the shade?
Talent, like beauty, to be pardoned, must be obscure and unostentatious.
True happiness involves the full use of one's power and talents.
This mysterious thing, artistic talent: the key to so much freedom, the escape from so much suffering.
Talent is an amalgam of high sensitivity; easy vulnerability; high sensory equipment (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting—intensely); a vivid imagination as well as a grip on reality; the desire to communicate one's own experience and sensations, to make one's self heard and seen.
We must all be cut out for what we do, he thought. However you make your living is where your talent lies.
Nature is as wasteful of promising young men as she is of fish-spawn. It's not just getting them killed in wars: mere middle age snuffs out more talent than even wars or sudden deaths do.
There is no substitute for talent. Industry and all the virtues are of no avail.
Well-matured and well-disciplined talent is always sure of a market, provided it exerts itself; but it must not cower at home and expect to be sought for.
Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.
Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off.
Talent is a dreadfully cheap commodity, cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work and study; a constant process of honing. Talent is a dull knife that will cut nothing unless it is wielded with great force.
Talent is a wonderful thing, but it won't carry a quitter.
Talent is never static. It's always growing or dying.
It's a great talent to be able to conceal one's talents.
But of course we can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts.
Timing and arrogance are decisive factors in the successful use of talent.
Keeping even the most humble talent wrapped in a napkin becomes the more reprehensible the greater the emergency.
As tools unused become rusty, so does the mind; a garden uncared for soon becomes smothered in weeds; a talent neglected withers and dies.
Not he deserves praise that has talents, but he that uses them.
Having talent is like having blue eyes. You don't admire a man for the color of his eyes. I admire a man for what he does with his talent.
Talent is a question of quantity. Talent does not write one page: it writes three hundred.
We must despise no sort of talent: they all have their separate duties and uses; all, the happiness of man for their object: they all improve, exalt, and gladden life.
Talent is nothing but a prolonged period of attention and a shortened period of mental assimilation.
You cannot define talent. All you can do is build the greenhouse and see if it grows.
Talent is cheap; dedication is expensive. It will cost you your life.
You must work at the talent as a sculptor works at stone, chiselling, plotting, rounding, edging & making perfect.
If a man has a talent and cannot use it, he has failed. If he has a talent and uses only half of it, he has partly failed. If he has a talent and learns somehow to use the whole of it, he has gloriously succeeded, and won a satisfaction and a triumph few men ever know.
To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.
You can do something with talent, but nothing with genius.
Genius makes its observations in shorthand; talent writes them out at length.
Genius must have talent as its complement and implement, just as in like manner imagination must have fancy. In short, the higher intellectual powers can only act through a corresponding energy of the lower.
The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius. Talent is a docile creature. It bows its head meekly while the world slips the collar over it. It backs into the shafts like a lamb. It draws its load cheerfully, and is patient of the bit and of the whip. But genius is always impatient of its harness; its wild blood makes it hard to train.
The discovery of truth by slow, progressive meditation is talent. Intuition of the truth, not preceded by perceptible meditation, is genius.
Who in the same given time can produce more than others has vigor; who can produce more and better, has talents; who can produce what none else can, has genius.
Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can.
Talent is a tenant in the house owned by genius.
Talent is like the marksman who hits a target which others cannot reach; genius is like the marksman who hits a target . . . which others cannot even see.
Genius is talent exercised with courage.
The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.
The artist uses the talent he has, wishing he had more talent. The talent uses the artist it has, wishing it had more artist.
I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.
Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated failures. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
Without perseverance talent is a barren bed.
