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?
We read not only because we cannot know enough people, but because friendship is so vulnerable, so likely to diminish or disappear, overcome by space, time, imperfect sympathies, and all the sorrows of familial and passional life.
I still have friends from primary school. And my two best girlfriends are from secondary school. I don't have to explain anything to them. I don't have to apologize for anything. They know. There's no judgment in any way.
As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task.
Yes, we must ever be friends; and of all who offer you friendship Let me be ever the first, the truest, the nearest and dearest.
All we can do is to make the best of our friends, love and cherish what is good in them, and keep out of the way what is bad.
That is the remarkable thing about drinking: it brings people together so quickly, but between night and morning it sets an interval again of years.
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