I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.
Interpretation
Emerson emphasizes the importance of genuine connection over superficial gestures.
In this quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that true expressions of friendship or camaraderie require more than just physical gestures, such as a handshake. He implies that for a connection to be meaningful, it must involve the entirety of a person—emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually—rather than just a mere outward display of friendship.
In practice
In a speech about meaningful relationships, one could use this quote to highlight the value of true connection.
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?
The ease of his manner freed me from painful restraint; the friendly frankness, as correct as cordial, with which he treated me, drew me to him
If you want to keep a friend, never test him.
... the friendship of worthless people has a bad effect (because they take part, unstable as they are, in worthless pursuits, and actually become bad through each other's influence). But the friendship of the good is good, and increases in goodness because of their association. They seem even to become better men by exercising their friendship and improving each other; for the traits that they admire in each other get transferred to themselves.
If this is the way You treat Your friends, no wonder You have so few!
If you desire with all your heart, friendship with every race on earth, your thought, spiritual and positive, will spread; it will become the desire of others, growing stronger and stronger, until it reaches the minds of all men.
A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.