Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
Genius
Genius, like Shakespeare’s toad, may be out at the elbows and down at the heels, yet still wears a precious jewel in its head.
—Hilary Bell
Men ov genius are like eagles, tha live on what tha kill, while men ov talents are like crows, tha live on what haz bin killed for them.
—Josh Billings
Early genius, like early cabbage, does not head well.
—Josh Billings
Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use.
—William Hazlitt
The advent of genius is like what the florists style the breaking of a seedling tulip into what we may call high-caste colors…. It is a surprise—there is nothing to account for it.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes
The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds; and instead of vines and olives for the pleasure and use of man, produces to its slothful owner the most abundant crop of poisons.
—David Hume
The mind contemplates genius through the shades of age, as the eye surveys through artificial capacity.
—Dr. Samuel Johnson
Genius, like a torch, shines less in the broad daylight of the present than in the light of the past.
—J. Petit-Senn
Genius is the alarm-clock of sleeping centuries.
—John Paul Richter
Genius, like fire, is a good servant, but a terrible master.
—Lydia Huntley Sigourney
Genius as with fashion: all those are displeased at it, who are not able to follow it.
—Thomas Warton