Mediocrity can talk; but it is for genius to observe.
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Isaac D'Israeli, The Curiosities of Literature, "Men of Genius Deficient in Conversation".Benjamin Disraeli
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In truth, I am nothing but a plodding mediocrity — please observe, a plodding mediocrity — for a mere mediocrity does not go very far, but a plodding one gets quite a distance. There is joy in that success, and a distinction can come from courage, fidelity and industry.
Benjamin N. Cardozo
For I think it is the case with genius that it is not when quiescent so very much above mediocrity as the difference between the two might lead us to think, but that it has the power and privilege of rising from that level to a height utterly far from mediocrity: in other words that its greatness is that it can be so great.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
One must indeed be ignorant of the methods of genius to suppose that it allows itself to be cramped by forms. Forms are for mediocrity, and it is fortunate that mediocrity can act only according to routine. Ability takes its flight unhindered.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I played over the music of that scoundrel Brahms. What a giftless bastard! It annoys me that this self-inflated mediocrity is hailed as a genius.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Disraeli, Benjamin
Dix, Otto
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