What does this quote mean?

“The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings.”

Thoreau argues that close friendship communicates through shared understanding that can run deeper than explicit statements, explanations, or ordinary conversational exchange.

Source note: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Wednesday; the friendship meditation contrasts true mutual understanding with the limits of conventional conversation.

“Use the active voice.”

The rule favors direct sentence construction when it makes agency clearer, while the surrounding discussion still allows passive voice when context requires it.

Source note: The Elements of Style, Chapter III, Rule 10, Project Gutenberg #37134; Strunk immediately qualifies the rule by noting legitimate uses of passive construction.

“Before him, I may think aloud.”

The line describes the relief of a friendship in which thought can be expressed openly before it is polished for public judgment.

Source note: Emerson continues his description of sincerity between friends in the essay Friendship.

“Put statements in positive form.”

Strunk recommends stating what is true or intended directly when possible instead of making the reader reconstruct the point from repeated negation.

Source note: The Elements of Style, Chapter III, Rule 11, Project Gutenberg #37134; the rule concerns sentence construction, not positive-thinking philosophy.

“If music be the food of love, play on.”

Love is treated as an appetite that can be intensified through beauty, sensation, and repeated emotional stimulation.

Source note: Act 1, Scene 1; Orsino opens the play by comparing music and appetite.

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”

The question opens a deliberate accounting of love, suggesting that affection becomes clearer when its different forms, depths, and expressions are named.

Source note: Sonnet 43 from Sonnets from the Portuguese; the poem proceeds by describing multiple dimensions of love.