A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.
Interpretation
The people we choose to associate with reflect our personal development.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that the friends we surround ourselves with play a significant role in our growth as individuals. It implies that as we evolve in life, our friendships change, reflecting our values, aspirations, and the kind of person we are becoming. The idea is that those we choose to befriend can influence our journey, offering both support and challenges that encourage us to grow.
In practice
During a speech at a graduation ceremony, one could quote this to emphasize the importance of choosing supportive friends.
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 boldly assert, in fact I think I know, that a lot of friendships and connections absolutely depend upon a sort of shared language, or slang. Not necessarily designed to exclude others, this can establish a certain comity and, even after a long absence, re-establish it in a second.
If this is the way You treat Your friends, no wonder You have so few!
A friend is long sought, hardly found, and with difficulty kept.
Friendship is so weird. You just pick a human you've met and you're like, 'Yep, I like this one,' and you just do stuff with them.
We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.
There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature.
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