Common sense is as rare as genius.
Interpretation
Common sense is uncommon and valuable, much like genius.
In this quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson highlights the rarity and importance of common sense, suggesting that it is as valuable as exceptional intelligence. He implies that while genius may be celebrated, it is equally essential to recognize the necessity of practical wisdom in daily life.
In practice
During a debate on decision-making, I would quote Emerson to emphasize the value of practical wisdom.
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?
A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid.
Mistakes are painful when they happen, but years later a collection of mistakes is what is called experience.
You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.
Negative thinking creates clouds at critical decision times.
All people on the planet are children, except for a very few. No one is grown up except those free of desire.
I have learned to live each day as it comes, and not to borrow trouble by dreading tomorrow.
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