What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the right road empirically, following one's nose, taking shortcuts.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Genius is a word too often tossed around in musical circles.
Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.
Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly.
Genius is the talent for seeing things straight.
Genius is the ability to renew one's emotions in daily experience.
Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it.
It takes people a long time to learn the difference between talent and genius, especially ambitious young men and women.
The popular mythology of creative genius depends on beloved stereotypes of the artist in youth and old age: the misunderstood upstart who forces us to see the world afresh; and the revered sage who shows us depths of insight attainable only through a lifetime of hard-won experience.
We reserve the term 'genius' for people who are creative, who are innovators, who think in ways that are entirely new. In the Middle Ages, the term 'genius' was reserved for people with the best memories. That is telling.
Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never.