See [Small Beginnings].
GENIUS AND WORK
Edison, when asked his definition of genius, answered: “Two per cent is genius, and ninety-eight per cent is hard work.” When asked on another occasion: “Mr. Edison, don’t you believe that genius is inspiration?” he replied: “No! Genius is perspiration.”
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GENIUS CAN NOT BE HIDDEN
The author of “Uncle Remus” apparently succeeded because he did not try. The literary world and the publishers came to him; he did not go to them. Here was a young, unknown, untraveled printer, of narrow school advantages, tho profitably educated in the best classics, and possessing, besides, much curious knowledge of negroes, of dogs, of horses, of the way of the red stream in the swamp, and of the folk of the woods. He had some familiar old stories to tell—so old and so familiar that no one had thought them worth while writing down—and he told them as quietly and as simply as he talked. But good work, tho hidden away in an obscure newspaper, gets itself recognized sooner or later, and one day Harris received an invitation to write some of his tales for one of the foremost of American magazines. He couldn’t understand it at all, but he wrote the stories, among them an account of the amusing adventures of Br’er Rabbit, Br’er Fox, and the Tar Baby, which clinched his literary fame. His tales succeeded far beyond his expectations, and for the same reason that made “Æsop’s Fables” an imperishable classic. For they were the slow fruitage of the wonder, the humor, and the pathos of a race of primitive storytellers. They were instinct with those primal passions which appeal to human nature, savage and civilized, the world over. (Text.) Ray Stannard Baker, The Outlook.
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GENIUS DISCOUNTED
Those who know Goldsmith best had recognized his genius so little that when he published “The Traveler” it was difficult to persuade them that he had written it himself. He was throughout life the butt of inferior wits, and in the arts which secured earthly success was completely distanced by inferior men, because he had no power of impressing himself as others. He had the finest wit, but it was not at command; he had genius and eloquence, but an invincible awkwardness and timidity prevented the display of either when their display would have won him respect. In conversation he was like a man who has a purse of gold, but who can not produce the single silver coin which is wanted at the moment.—W. J. Dawson, “The Makers of English Prose.”
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