The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
Interpretation
Friends bring warmth and beauty to our homes and lives.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote highlights the idea that the true value and charm of a home lie not in its physical decorations or possessions, but in the relationships and connections we cultivate with our friends. Each visitor adds a unique essence to our living space, making it a warm and inviting place filled with love and camaraderie.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of community, one might say, 'As Ralph Waldo Emerson wisely noted, the ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.'
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?
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
Every man has frequent grievances which only the solicitude of friendship will discover and remedy, and which would remain for ever unheeded in the mighty heap of human calamity, were it only surveyed by the eye of general benevolence equally attentive to every misery.
Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.
Good man! Genuine gentleman! God bless George Thompson, the great-hearted friend of my race.
There's a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.
Bluegrass has brought more people together and made more friends than any music in the world. You meet people at festivals and renew acquaintances year after year.
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