That's just why, because talent isn't genius, and no amount of energy can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing. I won't be a common-place dauber, so I don't intend to try any more.

…because talent isn't genius, and no amount of energy can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing.

You can do something with talent, but nothing with genius....

I have never felt any inward assurance of genius, or any presentiment of glory or of happiness. I have never seen myself in imagination great or famous, or even a husband, a father, an influential citizen. This indifference to the future, this absolute self-distrust, are, no doubt, to be taken as signs. What dreams I have are all vague and indefinite; I ought not to live, for I am now scarcely capable of living.

Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance.

Don’t be vain because you happen to have talent. You are not responsible for that; it was not of your doing. What you do with your talent is what matters.

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not;nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent.Genius will not; un-rewarded genius is almost a proverb.

Lack of confidence kills more dreams than lack of ability.

Talent matters—especially at elite levels—but people talk themselves out of giving their best effort long before talent becomes the limiting factor.

You're capable of more than you know. Don't be your own bottleneck.

The sad truth is, great talent is not enough.

They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor. (Eric Hoffer 1902-1983)

Anyone who does not see the vanity of the world is very vain himself. So who does not see it, apart from young people whose lives are all noise, diversions, and thoughts for the future?
But take away their diversion and you will see them bored to extinction. Then they feel their nullity without recognizing it, for nothing could be more wretched than to be intolerably depressed as soon as one is reduced to introspection with no means of diversion.

They made me feel like I'm nothing and not talented yet again I'm not

Ambition is only vanity ennobled.

Genius doesn't benefit from existing in a vacuum.