This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent." - Calvin Coolidge, fully John Calvin Coolidge, Jr.
"Wisdom is the talent of buying virtuous pleasures at the cheapest rate." - Henry Fielding
"The reason for so much bad science is not that talent is rare - not at all. What is rare is character." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
"The man who is born with a talent which he is meant to use finds his greatest happiness in using it." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"After all, it is the divinity within that makes the divinity without; and I have been more fascinated by a woman of talent and intelligence, though deficient in personal charms, than I have been by the most regular beauty." - Washington Irving
"Those who speak always and those who never speak are equally unfit for friendship. A good proportion of the talent of listening and speaking is the base of social virtues." - Johann Kaspar Lavater
"A career is born in public - talent in privacy." - Marilyn Monroe, born Norma Jeane Baker
"Human wisdom makes as ill use of her talent when she exercises it in rescinding from the number and sweetness of those pleasures that are naturally our due, as she employs it favorably and well in artificially disguising and tricking out the ills of life to alleviate the sense of them." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"Hidden talent counts for nothing." - Nero, fully Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus NULL
"It is taught that willing and voluntary service to others is the highest duty and glory in human life... The men of talent are constantly forced to serve the rest. They make the discoveries and inventions, order the battles, write the books, and produce the works of art. The benefit and enjoyment go to the whole. There are those who joyfully order their own lives so that they may serve the welfare of mankind." - William Graham Sumner
"Success in life is a matter not so much of talent or opportunity as of concentration and perseverance." - Charles William "C.W." Wendte
"Talent repeats; Genius creates. Talent is a cistern; Genius a fountain... Talent jogs to conclusions to which Genius takes giant leaps... Talent is full of thoughts, Genius of thought." - Edwin Percy Whipple
"I hold a doctrine, to which I owe not much, indeed, but all the little I ever had, namely, that with ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable." - Thomas Buxton, fully Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, 1st Baronet
"Press on. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "Press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race" - Calvin Coolidge, fully John Calvin Coolidge, Jr.
"Everybody had talent at twenty-five. The difficulty is to have it at fifty." - Edgar Degas, born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas
"It is unfortunate that superior talent and superior men are so seldom united." - Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
"The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge." - Albert Einstein
"In every artist there is a touch of audacity without which no talent is conceivable." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
"A man may be a miser of his wealth; he may tie up his talent in a napkin; he may hug himself in his reputation; but he is always generous in his love. Love cannot keep it to himself. Like light is constantly traveling. A man must spend it, must give it away." - Norman Macleod
"Every disease is a musical problem. Its cure, a musical solution. The more rapid and complete the solution, the greater the musical talent of the doctor." - Novalis, pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg NULL
"Tact is one of the first of mental virtues, the absence of which is frequently fatal to the best of talents. Without denying that it is a talent o itself, it will suffice if we admit that it supplies the place of many talents." - William Gilmore Simms
"Doing easily what others find is difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius." - Henri Frédéric Amiel
"You will to believe that because you are an individual expression of God there is purpose, real and meaningful in your life, and you will to believe that to achieve this purpose you are also equipped with the talent and potential necessary for its achievement. Will to believe it!... It is the originality in each of us and not our uniformity which gives life its deepest meaning." - Marcus Bach, fully James Marcus Bach
"Success is not primarily a matter of circumstances or native talent or even intelligence – it is a choice." - Tom Butler-Bowdon
"Talent is a very common family trait; genius belongs rather to the individuals – just as you find one giant or one dwarf in a family, but rarely a whole brood of either. Talent is often to be envied, and genius very commonly to be pitied. It stands twice the chance of the other of dying in a hospital, in jail, in debt, in bad repute. It is a perpetual insult to mediocrity; its every word is a trespass against somebody’s vested ideas." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
"I don't have a lot of respect for talent. Talent is genetic. It's what you do with it that counts." - Martin Ritt
"Among the smaller duties of life, I hardly know any one more important than that of not praising where praise is not due. Reputation is one of the prizes for which men contend: it produces more labor and more talent than twice the wealth of a country could ever rear up. It is the coin of genius, and it is the imperious duty of every man to bestow it with the most scrupulous justice and the wisest economy." - Sydney Smith
"Talent repeats; Genius creates. Talent is a cistern; Genius, a fountain… Talent accumulates knowledge, and has it packed up in the memory; Genius assimilates it with its own substance, grows with every new accession, and converts knowledge into power. Talent gives out what it has taken in; Genius, what has risen from its unsounded wells of living thought." - Edwin Percy Whipple
"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking." - Albert Einstein
"The buried talent is the sunken rock on which most lives strike and founder." - Frederick William Faber
"A talent is formed in stillness, a character in the world's torrent." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Ordinary people merely think how they shall spend their time; a man of talent tries to use it." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"You can judge the height of someone’s talent by what he aspires to. Only a great thing can satisfy a great talent." - Baltasar Gracián
"Most successful men have not achieved their distinction by having some new talent or opportunity presented to them. They have developed the opportunity that was at hand." - Bruce Barton
"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “Press On” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race." -
"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 derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race." -
"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race." -
"It is adverse to talent to be consorted and trained up with inferior minds and inferior companions, however high they may rank. The foal of the racer neither finds out his speed nor calls out his powers if pastured out with the common herd, that are destined for the collar and the yoke." - Charles Caleb Colton
"There are circumstances of peculiar difficulty and danger, where a mediocrity of talent is the most fatal quality that a man can possibly possess. Had Charles the first, and Louis the Sixteenth, been more wise or more weak, more firm or more yielding, in either case they had both of them saved their heads." - Charles Caleb Colton
"They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor." - Eric Hoffer
"We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but is own talents." - Eric Hoffer