But genius, and even great talent, springs less from seeds of intellect and social refinement superior to those of other people than from the faculty of transforming and transposing them. To heat a liquid with an electric lamp requires not the strongest lamp possible, but one of which the current can cease to illuminate, can be diverted so as to give heat instead of light. To mount the skies it is not necessary to have the most powerful of motors, one must have a motor which, instead of continuing to run along the earth's surface, intersecting with a vertical line the horizontal line which it began by following, is capable of converting its speed into lifting power. Similarly, the men who produce works of genius are not those who live in the most delicate atmosphere, whose conversation is the most brilliant or their culture the most extensive, but those who have had the power, ceasing suddenly to live only for themselves, to transform their personality into a sort of mirror, in such a way that their life, however mediocre it may be socially and even, in a sense, intellectually, is reflected by it, genius consisting in reflecting power and not int he intrinsic quality of the scene reflected.
Marcel ProustTags: talent seed social time genius french intellect proust
It is fortunate for this community that I am not a criminal.
Arthur Conan DoyleTags: sherlock-holmes crime intellect london superiority detectives criminals
Simply to render oneself able to understand what other Christian thinkers have themselves come to understand and to more or less felicitously communicate requires that one's mind not be a blank slate but already properly formed, disciplined, and exercised.
Gregory B. SadlerTags: theology intellect discipline tradition christian-philosophy christian-thought intellectual-life
The very fact of having fixed conclusions to strive for in orthodox belief does not render the Christian philosopher dogmatic but rather intellectually fruitful, willing to take and follow reason further than the putatively undogmatic unbelieving philosopher
Gregory B. SadlerTags: reason philosophy belief intellect orthodoxy dogmatism philosophy-of-religion christian-philosophy
The curious mind embraces science; the gifted and sensitive, the arts; the practical, business; the leftover becomes an economist
Nassim Nicholas TalebTags: science art mind economics intellect expertise economists
The Sufi way is through knowledge and practice, not through intellect and talk.
Idries ShahTags: knowledge practice philosophy sufi intellect sufism
Arousal begins within the mind, then seeps out where fantasy propels physicality.
Kristie LeVangieTags: sexuality sex fantasy intellect arousal physicality
When unlimited and unrestricted by individual rights a government is men's deadliest enemy.
Ayn RandIt is better to have a fair intellect that is well used, than a powerful one that is idle.
Bryant McGillTags: intelligence action intellect
For the Word of God is not received by faith if it flits about in the top of the brain, but when it takes root in the depth of the heart . . . the heart's distrust is greater than the mind's blindness. It is harder for the heart to be furnished with assurance [of God's love] than for the mind to be endowed with thought.
John CalvinTags: god soul faith grace intellect
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