Thomas Babington Macaulay Quotes

It's funny how you can struggle with one piece and write a better one in a minute. When things come easy, it means it's good.

Sir, the slowness of genius is hard to bear, but the slowness of mediocrity is insufferable.

Talent works, genius creates.

Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.

God gives talent. Work transforms talent into genius.

Life is something like a trumpet. If you don't put anything in, you won't get anything out.

No one can arrive from being talented alone, work transforms talent into genius.

You don't disrupt genius at work.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

If I get anything out, producing anything, no matter whether it's good or not, I allow myself a little pat on the back.

When you're a kid, and someone's an artist, you think of Leonardo da Vinci. You don't think that's a job; you just think of a man with a beard, painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Genius gives birth, talent delivers.

A genius is always on duty; even his dreams are tax deductible.

People who aren't artists often feel that artists are inspired. But if you work at your art you don't have time to be inspired.

Hunger is the handmaid of genius.

Everybody is different. Some writers can write reams of great books and then J. D. Salinger wrote just a few. Beethoven wrote nine symphonies. They were all phenomenal. Mozart wrote some 40 symphonies, and they were all phenomenal. That doesn't mean Beethoven was a lesser writer, it's just some guys are capable of more productivity, some guys take more time.

For a genius to be a genius, he must have a selfless slave between himself and the world.

Though you may have known clever men who were indolent, you never knew a great man who was so; and when I hear a young man spoken of as giving promise of great genius, the first question I ask about him always is, Does he work?

That adage about genius being 5 percent inspiration and 95 perspiration - it's true.

Creativity is a by-product of hard work. If I never have another really new idea, it won't matter.

What has been done in the world - the works of genius - cost nothing. There is no painful effort, but it is the spontaneous flowing of the thought. Shakespeare made his Hamlet as a bird weaves its nest.

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.

One is distracted by this notion that there is such an thing as inspiration, that it comes fast and easy. And some people are graced by that style. I'm not. So I have to work as hard as any stiff to come up with my payload

His hypothesis goes to this - to make the common run of his readers fancy they can do all that can be done by genius, and to make the man of genius believe he can only do what is to be done by mechanical rules and systematic industry. This is not a very feasible scheme; nor is Sir Joshua sufficiently clear and explicit in his reasoning in support of it.

Everyone wants a definition of creativity that makes what they do into something special and what everyone else does into nothing special. But the fact is, we're all creative. We come up with weird and interesting ideas all the time. The biggest difference between 'creators' isn't their imagination - it's how hard they work. Ideas are easy. Doing stuff is hard.