See Also: FAME, INTELLIGENCE, MIND

1. Early genius is like a cabbage: it doesn’t head well —Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms
2. A fine genius, in his own country, is like gold in the mine —Ben Franklin
3. Genius, in one respect, is like gold —numbers of persons are constantly writing about both who have neither —Charles Caleb Colton
4. Genius is like a flint of many edges, but it is the edges that give the sparkle —Moritz Gottlieb Saphir
5. Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use —William Hazlitt
6. Genius, like water, will find its level —Proverb
7. Genius must have talent as its complement and implement, just as, in like manner, imagination must have fancy —Samuel Taylor Coleridge Coleridge built on this simile as follows: “In short, the higher intellectual powers can only act through a corresponding energy of the lower.”
8. Genius without education is like silver in the mine —Benjamin Franklin
9. A genius without vices is like a race horse without a good jockey —Benjamin De Casseres
10. Great men are like mountains; we do not appreciate their magnitude while we are still close to them —Joseph Chamberlain
11. Great men are like meteors; they litter and are consumed to enlighten the world —Napoleon Bonaparte
12. Great men, like great epochs, are explosive material in whom tremendous energy has been accumulated —Friedrich Nietzsche The simile is sometimes quoted with the word ‘ages’ substituted for ‘epochs.’
13. Great men stand like solitary towers in the city of God —William Wadsworth Longfellow
14. Great minds are like eagles, and build their nest in some lofty solitude —Arthur Schopenhauer
15. It is with rivers as it is with people: the greatest are not always the most agreeable nor the best to live with —Henry Van Dyke
16. Men of genius are like eagles, that live on what they kill, while men of talents are like crows, that live on what has been killed for them —Josh Billings In Billings’ special phonetic dialect this reads: “Men ov genius … tha live on what tha … while men ov … tha live on what haz bin killed for them.”