Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Talent is to actors what luck is to card players. It's not really anything; it's just a fictitious word that people have created and labeled things. Talent is like, you know, I never really believed in talent, I believed in drive and determination and preparation, but talent is sort of like luck.
Talent does what it can; genius does what it must.
The real issue is not talent as an independent element, but talent in relationship to will, desire, and persistence. Talent without these things vanishes and even modest talent with those characteristics grows.
Talent is a faculty that is highly developed, but genius commands all the faculties.
Talent perceives differences; genius, unity.
Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.
Somehow our society has formed a one-sided view of the human personality, and for some reason everyone understood giftedness and talent only as it applied to the intellect. But it is possible not only to be talented in one's thoughts but also to be talented in one's feelings as well.
A talent somewhat above mediocrity, shrewd and not too sensitive, is more likely to rise in the world than genius.
Talent is nothing but a prolonged period of attention and a shortened period of mental assimilation.
Talent is what you possess; genius is what possesses you.