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?
All powerful souls have kindred with each other
So far be distant; and good night, sweet friend: thy love ne'er alter, till they sweet life end
I'll never see them again. I know that. And they know that. And knowing this, we say farewell.
I take friendship very seriously.
When friendship disappears then there is a space left open to that awful loneliness of the outside world which is like the cold space between the planets. It is an air in which men perish utterly.
A good friend who points out mistakes is to be respected, as if he reveals a secret of hidden treasure.
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