Quote

Nature never rhymes her children, nor makes two men alike. When we see a great man, we fancy a resemblance to some historical person, and predict the sequel of his character and fortune, a result which he is sure to disappoint. None will ever solve the problem of his character according to our prejudice, but only in his high unprecedented way.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Ralph Waldo Emerson
Age: 78 †
Born: 1803
Born: May 25
Died: 1882
Died: April 27
Biographer
Diarist
Essayist
Philosopher
Poet
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
R. W. Emerson
Waldo Emerson
Men
Problem
Leadership
Prejudice
Sequels
Persons
Results
According
Resemblance
Person
High
Historical
Disappoint
Ever
Sure
Solve
Unprecedented
Children
Makes
Greatness
Predict
Great
Nature
Fortune
Rhyme
Way
Two
Result
Alike
Sequel
Never
Character
None
Fancy
Rhymes

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Men consort in camp and town But the poet dwells alone.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Our best thoughts come from others.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It is dainty to be sick if you have leisure and convenience for it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The good news is that the moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears in your quest for abundance. Success comes from within, not from without.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A beautiful woman is a practical poet.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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When a dog is chasing after you, whistle for him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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When a thought of Plato becomes a thought to me,--when a truth that fired the soul of Pindar fires mine, time is no more. When I feel that we two meet in a perception, that our two souls are tinged with the same hue, and do as it were run into one, why should I measure degrees of latitude, why should I count Egyptian years?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Any extraordinary degree of beauty in man or woman involves a moral charm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I suppose every old scholar has had the experience of reading something in a book which was significant to him, but which he could never find again. Sure he is that he read it there, but no one else ever read it, nor can he find it again, though he buy the book and ransack every page.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A good symbol is the best argument, and is a missionary to persuade thousands.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health and peace, and is still nothing at last,--a long way leading nowhere.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from time to time, in history, men are born a whole age too soon.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There are dull and bright, sacred and profane, coarse and fine egotists. It is a disease that, like influenza, falls on all constitutions. In the distemper known to physicians as chorea, the patient sometimes turns round, and continues to spin slowly in one spot. Is egotism a metaphysical varioloid of this malady?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant. Now we reckon them as bank-days, by some debt which is to be paid us, or which we are to pay, or some pleasure we are to taste.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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In conversation the game is, to say something new with old words. And you shall observe a man of the people picking his way along, step by step, using every time an old boulder, yet never setting his foot on an old place.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Sickness is poor-spirited, and cannot serve anyone it must husband its resources to live. But health or fullness answers its own ends, and has to spare, runs over, and inundates the neighborhoods and creeks of other men's necessities.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Being perfectly well-dressed gives a feeling of tranquillity that religion is powerless to bestow.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I'm not afraid of falling into my inkpot.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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You cannot institute, without peril of charlatanism.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The essence of all jokes, of all comedy, seems to be an honest or well intended halfness a non performance of that which is pretended to be performed, at the same time that one is giving loud pledges of performance. The balking of the intellect, is comedy and it announces itself in the pleasant spasms we call laughter.
Ralph Waldo Emerson