“The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (verified)
Harvard Divinity School Address (Primary source)
Delivered at Harvard, this controversial speech challenged traditional religious doctrines and called for a more personal and intuitive understanding of spirituality. Emerson advocated for a direct experience of God within oneself, rather than relying on intermediaries or historical dogma.
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“Imitation cannot go above its model. The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it, because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator, something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man’s.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (verified)
“The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (verified)“In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (verified)“The law of nature is, Do the thing, and you shall have the power: but they who do not the thing have not the power.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (verified)“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (verified)More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson →
“Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think.”
— Ayn Rand (verified)“If Jack’s in love, he’s no judge of Jill’s beauty.”
— Benjamin Franklin (verified)“It was for beauty that the world was made.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (verified)“For every friend whom he loses for truth, he gains a better.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (verified)