A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another.
Interpretation
A true friend allows for open honesty and authenticity. In their presence, one can be completely oneself without pretense.
Ralph Waldo Emerson highlights the profound nature of true friendship, emphasizing that a genuine friend is someone with whom one can be completely sincere and honest. This relationship enables an individual to express their thoughts freely and authentically, shedding societal masks and pretenses, much like elements in chemistry that interact at a fundamental level. In essence, true friendship allows for a bond where individuals connect on a deeper, more genuine plane.
In practice
In a speech about the value of friendship, you might reference this quote to illustrate how true friends allow us to be ourselves.
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?
I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For, so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight. I breathed a song into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For who has sight so keen and strong, That it can follow the flight of song? Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroke; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend.
True friendship ought never to conceal what it thinks.
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends.
Associate yourself with people of good quality, for it is better to be alone than in bad company.
Time draweth wrinkles in a fair face, but addeth fresh colors to a fast friend, which neither heat, nor cold, nor misery, nor place, nor destiny, can alter or diminish
This was the door to both sustenance and sanity. And we were each other's key.
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