Quotes about talent

Talent isn't genius, and no amount of energy can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing. I won't be a commonplace dauber, so I don't intend to try any more.

— Louisa May Alcott

I believe that every person is born with talent.

— Maya Angelou

It takes little talent to see clearly what lies under one's nose, a good deal of it to know in which direction to point that organ.

— W. H. Auden

There are two kinds of talent, man-made talent and God-given talent. With man-made talent you have to work very hard. With God-given talent, you just touch it up once in a while.

— Pearl Bailey

Talent is only the starting point.

— Irving Berlin

A man gift will make a way for him.

— Bible

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, I used everything you gave me..

— Erma Bombeck

Middle age snuffs out more talent than even wars or sudden death does.

— Gerald Brenan

If I have any talent at all it's from God, and my mom, who was on Capitol Records also.

— Garth Brooks

Your talent is God's gift to you; what you do with it is your gift to God.

— Leo Buscaglia

Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.

— Cyril Connolly

A talent somewhat above mediocrity, shrewd and not too sensitive, is more likely to rise in the world than genius.

— Charles Horton Cooley

Ordinary people think that talent must be always on its own level and that it arises every morning like the sun, rested and refreshed, ready to draw from the same storehouse -- always open, always full, always abundant -- new treasures that it will heap up on those of the day before; such people are unaware that, as in the case of all mortal things, talent has its increase and decrease, and that independently of the career it takes, like everything that breathes... it undergoes all the accidents of health, of sickness, and of the dispositions of the soul -- its gaiety or its sadness. As with our perishable flesh. talent is obliged constantly to keep guard over itself, to combat, and to keep perpetually on the alert amid the obstacles that witness the exercise of its singular power.

— Eugene Delacroix

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.

— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.

— Henry Van Dyke

God doesn't give people talents that he doesn't want people to use.

— Iron Eagle

Every man has his own vocation, talent is the call.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is a happy talent to know how to play.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book; a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise.

— 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 new power as a benefactor.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

No one respects a talent that is concealed.

— Desiderius Erasmus

Concealed talent brings no reputation.

— Desiderius Erasmus

Talents go by nature not by birth.

— (Frederick II) Frederick The Great

The most gifted natures are perhaps also the most trembling.

— Andre Gide

Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Talent is an amalgam of high sensitivity; easy vulnerability; high sensory equipment (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting -- intensely); a vivid imagination as well as a grip on reality; the desire to communicate one's own experience and sensations, to make one's self heard and seen.

— Uta Hagen

Hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy.

— Robert Half

We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.

— Eric Hoffer

If you have this enormous talent, it's got you by the balls, it's a demon. You can't be a family man and a husband and a caring person and be that animal. Dickens wasn't that nice a guy.

— Dustin Hoffman

There is no substitute for talent. Industry and all the virtues are of no avail.

— Aldous Huxley

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.

— Erica Jong

The great rule: If the little bit you have is nothing special in itself, at least find a way of saying it that is a little bit special.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

Use those talents you have. You will make it. You will give joy to the world. Take this tip from nature: The woods would be a very silent place if no birds sang except those who sang best.

— Bernard Meltzer

Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can.

— Owen Meredith

The American white man (not to speak of the Indian, the Negro, the Mexican) hasn't a ghost of a chance. If he has any talent he's doomed to have it crushed one way or another. The American way is to seduce a man by bribery and make a prostitute of him. Or else to ignore him, starve him into submission and make a hack of him.

— Henry Miller

This is how I define talent; it is a gift that God has given us in secret, which we reveal without knowing it.

— Charles De Montesquieu

Hidden talent counts for nothing.

— Nero

He had a lot of talent, but didn't have much dedication, wasn't organized, didn't know how to learn, didn't know how to comprehend what he was doing, didn't try to learn how to get better.

— Jack Nicklaus

The greatest talents often lie buried out of sight.

— Titus Maccius Plautus

Everyone according to their talent and every talent according to its work.

— French Proverb

Premature development of the powers of both mind and body leads to an early grave.

— John Quinton

Talent is a matter of quantity. Talent does not write on page, it writes three hundred.

— Jules Renard

I don't have a lot of respect for talent. Talent is genetic. It's what you do with it that counts.

— Martin Ritt

I thought my talent would transcend my outspokenness. I was wrong.

— Mickey Rourke

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

Talent is something, but tact is everything. It is the interpreter of all riddles, the surmounter of all difficulties, the remover of all obstacles.

— W. P. Scargill

Talent works, genius creates.

— Robert Schumann

Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing.

— Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Talent is nothing but a prolonged period of attention and a shortened period of mental assimilation.

— Konstantin Stanislavisky

I'd rather have a lot of talent and a little experience than a lot of experience and a little talent.

— John Wooden

Never doubt of your talents, all you wait for is just a right opportunity. Then, you can fly high up to where you belong.......

— Mak Kazeronnie

A talent is not a talent until it is discovered.

— Source Unknown