Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes on Mastery & Expertise (14 Quotes)

Our poets are men of talents who sing, and not the children of music

Give a boy address and accomplishments and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes.

Talent finds its models, methods, and ends in society, exists for exhibition, and goes to the soul only for power to work. Genius is its own end, and draws its means and the style of its architecture from within.

Each man has his own vocation his talent is his call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him.

Talent for talent's sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.

Imagination is not a talent of some people but is the health of everyone.

The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius.... They look backward and not forward. But genius looks forward the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead man hopes genius creates. Whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not his cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame.

A man is like a bit of Labrador spar, which has no lustre as you turn it in your hand until you come to a particular angle then it shows deep and beautiful colors. There is no adaptation or universal applicability in men, but each has his special Talent, and the mastery of Successful men consists in adroitly keeping themselves where and when that turn shall be oftenest to be practiced.

Every man has his own vocation, talent is the call.

Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise.

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.

Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character.

The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief. Talent is mistaken for genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatest, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art.

Imagination is not a talent of some men but is the health of every man.