Genius unexerted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks. – Henry Ward Beecher

I have known no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or defect, either physical or spiritual, for what the gods had given him. – Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson, 1911

I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone. – John F. Kennedy, in an address to Nobel Prize winners