People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.
Interpretation
Great talents are common, but those who possess balance and symmetry in their abilities are rare.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote highlights the distinction between mere talent and the harmony that comes from balancing various strengths. While many individuals may have impressive skills or gifts, it is the rare person who not only excels in specific areas but also maintains a sense of balance and overall symmetry in their capabilities and character, leading to a more holistic form of excellence.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal development.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
To ward off alienation and gloom, it is only necessary to remember the unremembered heroes of the past, and to look around us for the unnoticed heroes of the present.
History by apprising them [the people] of the past will enable them to judge of the future. . . . It will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men: it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views.
Wait by the river long enough and the body of your enemy will float by you.
If you want to explore things you haven't explored, having people who look just like you and think just like you is not the best way.
He who has a slight disadvantage plays more attentively, inventively and more boldly than his antagonist who either takes it easy or aspires after too much. Thus a slight disadvantage is very frequently seen to convert into a good, solid advantage.
It is best to act with confidence, no matter how little right you have to it.
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