Creativity Quote by Edgar Degas

Degas punctures the romance of youthful genius with a line that sounds like a compliment until you realize it’s a dare. “Everyone has talent at twenty-five” isn’t generous; it’s leveling. At twenty-five you still have novelty on your side: energy, risk tolerance, the cultural appetite for the new. Talent can look like a flare - bright, untested, half-fed by other people’s expectations. Degas, who spent a lifetime drawing the same bodies and scenes until they surrendered their secrets, implies that early “talent” is often just potential plus momentum.

The second sentence turns the screw. “The difficulty is to have it at fifty” reframes talent as something you can lose, not just something you either possess or don’t. It’s a jab at the myth of the one-time breakthrough, the idea that inspiration is a permanent property rather than a discipline. At fifty you’ve accumulated repetition, failure, physical limits, and the deadening competence of routine. You’ve also accumulated taste - which can be its own enemy, making you too self-aware to be fearless.

Degas’s context matters: an era when art was being reorganized by modernity, markets, and movements, and when the Impressionists’ shock could quickly harden into a style. He’s warning against becoming a brand of your former self. The subtext is blunt: real talent is endurance - the ability to keep seeing freshly when the world has already decided who you are.