"This is the most extraordinary young man that has encountered my knowledge. It is wonderful how the whelp has written such things."

Thomas Chatterton Art See all quotes by Thomas Chatterton →

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“I cannot find in Chatterton's works any thing so extraordinary as the age at which they were written. They have a facility, vigour, and knowledge, which were prodigious in a boy of sixteen, but which would not have been so in a boy of twenty. He did not show extraordinary powers of genius, but extraordinary precocity. Nor do I believe he would have written better, had he lived. He knew this himself, or he would have lived. Great geniuses, like great kings, have too much to think of to kill themselves.”

“He was an instance that a complete genius and a complete rogue can be formed before a man is of age.”

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"The man who is too old to learn was probably always too old to learn."

— Henry S. Haskins

Literature1875–1957

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"The evolution of the brain not only overshot the needs of prehistoric man, it is the only example of evolution providing a species with an organ which it does not know how to use."

— Arthur Koestler

Journalism1905–1983

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"Previously, the world in my eyes is just a graphic drawing of death. Now it comes to life and becomes a subject as exquisite as rock quartz. I always like reading Zhuangzi, but I only appreciate his d…"

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"We've all done things we shouldn't, it's just I did stuff at college, when nobody knew about it, so I'm not a saint. … I wasted time doing self-destructive things but it didn't work. I found out you c…"

— Anne Hathaway

Entertainment1982

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