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?
To find one real friend in a lifetime is good fortune; to keep him is a blessing.
The Making of Friends Life is sweet because of the friends we have made And the things which in common we share; We want to live on, not because of ourselves, But because of the ones who would care. It's living and doing for somebody else On that all of life's splendor depends, And the joy of it all, when we count it all up, Is found in the making of friends.
Like a surgeon, friends cut you in order to heal you.
Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
I don't want enemies. I want friends, and I want them in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and loving whoever they want to.
Once you are my friend, I am responsible for you.
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