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?
Maybe I'm just a slow learner or something, but I like to have things laid out as plainly and simply as possible.
A house cannot be made habitable in a day; and, after all, how few days go to make up a century.
Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.
What is it that stands higher than words? Action. What is it that stands higher than action? Silence.
The first proof of a well-ordered mind is to be able to pause and linger within itself.
...but then the general trouble with ignorance is always that the ignorant person has no idea that that's what they are. You can be ignorant and stupid and go through your whole life without ever encountering any evidence against the hypothesis that you're a genius.
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