This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads." - Erica Mann Jong
"Recognition given to a man’s talent or virtue is not properly friendship." - George Santayana
"The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well and doing well whatever you do without a thought of fame. If it comes out a thought of fame. If it comes at all it will come because it is deserved, not because it is sought after." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"The toughest thing about success is that you've got to keep on being a success. Talent is only a starting point in business. You've got to keep working that talent." - Irving Berlin, pseudonymn for Israel Baline
"Complaisance, though in itself it be scarce reckoned in the number of moral virtues, is that which gives lustre to every talent a man can be possessed of." - Joseph Addison
"There are many shining qualities on the mind of man; but none so useful as discretion. It is this which gives a value to all the rest, and sets them at work in their proper places, and turns them to the advantage of their possessor. Without it, learning is pedantry; wit, impertinence; virtue itself looks like weakness; and the best parts only qualify a man to be more sprightly in errors, and active to his own prejudice. Though a man has all other perfections and wants discretion, he will be of no great consequence in the world; but if he has this single talent in perfection, and but a common share of others, he may do what he pleases in his station of life." - Joseph Addison
"It is a very rare thing for a man of talent to succeed by his talent." - Joseph Roux
"Knowledge, wisdom, erudition, arts, and elegance, what are they, but the mere trappings of the mind, if they do not serve to increase the happiness of the possessor? A mind rightly instituted in the school of philosophy, acquires at once the stability of the oak, and the flexibility of the osier. Philosophy can add to our happiness in no other manner but by diminishing our misery; it should not pretend to increase our present stock, but make us economists of what we are possessed of. Happy were we all born philosophers; all born with a talent of thus dissipating our own cares by spreading them upon all mankind." - Oliver Goldsmith
"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." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession... Do that which is assigned to you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Talent for talents’ 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." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Genius is sacrificed to talent every day... The difference between Talent and Genius is, that Talent says things which he has never heard but once, and Genius things which he has never heard... Genius is power; talent is applicability." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Imagination is not a talent of some men, but is the health of every man." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous half-possession. That which each can do best none but his Maker can teach him." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them. It depends on the mood of the man, whether he shall see the sunset or the fine poem. There are always sunsets, and there is always genius; but only a few hours so serene that we can relish nature or criticism. The more or less depends on structure or temperament. Temperament is the iron wire on which the beads are strung. Of what use is fortune or talent to a cold and defective nature?" - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"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 a new power as a benefactor." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief. Talent is mistaken for genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatest, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"There is the same difference between talent and genius that there is between a stone mason and a sculptor." - Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll
"Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius." - Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
"What passes in the world for talent or dexterity or enterprise is often only a want of moral principle. We may succeed where others fail, not from greater share of invention, but from not being nice in the choice of expedients." - William Hazlitt
"Concealed talent brings no reputation. " - Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, sometimes known as Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam
"No one respects talent that is concealed." - Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, sometimes known as Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam
"Stupidity is a talent for misconception. " - Edgar Allan Poe
"The habit of judging is so nearly incurable, and its cure is such an almost interminable process, that we must concentrate ourselves for a long while on keeping it in check, and this check is to be found in kind interpretations. We must come to esteem very lightly our sharp eye for evil, on which perhaps we once prided ourselves as cleverness. We must look at our talent for analysis of character as a dreadful possibility of huge uncharitableness. We are sure to continue to say clever things, so long as we continue to indulge in this analysis; and clever things are equally sure to be sharp and acid. We must grow to something higher, and something truer, than a quickness in detecting evil. " - Frederick William Faber
"Most of the dogmatic religions have exhibited a perverse talent for taking the wrong side on the most important concepts in the material universe, from the structure of the solar system to the origin of man." - George Gaylord Simpson
"Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you. " - Henri Frédéric Amiel
"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. " - Henri Frédéric Amiel
"Genius is talent set on fire by courage." - Henry Van Dyke, fully Henry Jackson Van Dyke
"Yet, analytical truth is not as mysterious, or as secret, so as to not allow us to see that people with a talent for directing consciences see truth rise spontaneously. " - Jacques Lacan, fully Jacques Marie Émile Lacan
"We have the heaviest concentration of lawyers on Earth—one for every five-hundred Americans; three times as many as are in England, four times as many as are in West Germany, twenty-one times as many as there are in Japan. We have more litigation, but I am not sure that we have more justice. No resources of talent and training in our own society, even including the medical care, is more wastefully or unfairly distributed than legal skills. Ninety percent of our lawyers serve 10 percent of our people. We are over-lawyered and under-represented." - Jimmy Carter, fully James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr.
"I believe that anyone can be successful in life, regardless of natural talent or the environment within which we live. This is not based on measuring success by human competitiveness for wealth, possessions, influence, and fame, but adhering to God's standards of truth, justice, humility, service, compassion, forgiveness, and love." - Jimmy Carter, fully James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr.
"A really great talent finds its happiness in execution. " - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Literature is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none." - Jules Renard, aka Pierre-Jules Renard
"Among all the emotions, the rich have the least talent for love. It is possible to love one's dog, dress or duck-shooting hat, but a human being presents a more difficult problem. The rich might wish to experience feelings of affection, but it is almost impossible to chip away the enamel of their narcissism. They take up all the space in all the mirrors in the house. Their children, who represent the most present and therefore the most annoying claim on their attention, usually receive the brunt of their irritation." - Lewis H. Lapham
"A talent for truth is real property. If a man loves truth better than things, people like to be around where he is. Almost everybody wishes he could be honest, but you can’t have the spirit of truth when your heart is set on dickering for things." - Lloyd C. Douglas, fully Lloyd Cassel Douglas, born Doya C. Douglas
"Conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long; even if it is, the consciousness of possessing and using it well should satisfy one, and the great charm of all power is modesty." - Louisa May Alcott
"You have a good many little gifts and virtues, but there is no need of parading them, for conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long, and the great charm of all power is modesty." - Louisa May Alcott
"Genius is talent exercised with courage." - Ludwig Wittgenstein, fully Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein
"Facts do not find their way into the world in which our beliefs reside; they did not produce our beliefs, they do not destroy them; they may inflict on them the most constant refutations without weakening them, and an avalanche of afflictions or ailments succeeding one another without interruption in a family will not make it doubt the goodness of its God or the talent of its doctor." - Marcel Proust, fully Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
"It is unfortunate that superior talent and superior men are so seldom united." - Maria Von Ebner-Eschenbach, or Marie von Ebner-Eschenbachová, Marie Freifrau von Ebner-Eschenbach
"The writer’s job is to write with rigor, with commitment, to defend what they believe with all the talent they have. I think that’s part of the moral obligation of a writer, which cannot be only purely artistic. I think a writer has some kind of responsibility at least to participate in the civic debate. I think literature is impoverished, if it becomes cut from the main agenda of people, of society, of life." - Mario Vargas Llosa, fully Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa
"Those who are blessed with the most talent don't necessarily outperform everyone else. It's the people with follow-through who excel." - Mary Kay Ash, fully Mary Kathlyn Wagner Ash
"A man with a talent does what is expected of him, makes his way, constructs, is an engineer, a composer, a builder of bridges. It's the natural order of things that he construct objects outside himself and his family. The woman who does so is aberrant. We have to expiate for this cursed talent someone handed out to us, by mistake, in the black mystery of genetics." - May Sarton, pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton
"Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives." - Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson
"Our affluent society contains those of talent and insight who are driven to prefer poverty, to choose it, rather than to submit to the desolation of an empty abundance. It is a strange part of the other America that one finds in the intellectual slums." - Michael Harrington, fully Edward Michael "Mike" Harrington
"In the end, the most important thing is to be true to yourself and those you love and work hard. Work like there's no tomorrow. Train. Strive. Really train and cultivate your talent to the highest degree. Be the best at what you do. Get to know more about your field than anybody alive. Use the tools of your trade, if it's books or a floor to dance on or a body of water to swim in. Whatever it is, it's yours. That's what I've always tried to remember." - Michael Jackson, fully Michael Joseph Jackson, aka MJ or King of Pop
"There are plenty of teams in every sport that have great players and never win titles. Most of the time, those players aren't willing to sacrifice for the greater good of the team. The funny thing is, in the end, their unwillingness to sacrifice only makes individual goals more difficult to achieve. One thing I believe to the fullest is that if you think and achieve as a team, the individual accolades will take care of themselves. Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships." - Michael Jordan, fully Michael Jeffrey Jordon, aka MJ, Air Jordan and His Airness
"Camus dealt with the question best. He said that he liked individuals who take sides more than literatures that do. 'One either serves the whole of man or does not serve him at all. And if man needs bread and justice, and if what has to be done must be done to serve this need, he also needs pure beauty which is the bread of his heart.' So Camus called for 'Courage in and talent in one's work.' And Márquez redefined tender fiction thus: The best way a writer can serve a revolution is to write as well as he can. I believe that these two statements might be the credo for all of us who write. They do not resolve the conflicts that have come, and will continue to come, to contemporary writers. But they state plainly an honest possibility of doing so, they turn the face of the writer squarely to her and his existence, the reason to be, as a writer, and the reason to be, as a responsible human, acting, like any other, within a social context." - Nadine Gordimer
"Does anybody really think that they didn't get what they had because they didn't have the talent or the strength or the endurance or the commitment?" - Nelson Mandela, fully Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela