Relative Emphasis
Words are often emphasized in order to exhibit the idea they express as compared or contrasted with some other idea. This is called relative emphasis.
Examples
A friend can not be known in prosperity; an enemy can not be hidden in adversity.
It is much better to be injured than to injure.
REMARK.—In many instances one part only of the antithesis is expressed, the corresponding idea being understood; as,
A friendly eye would never see such faults.
Here the unfriendly eye is understood.
King Henry exclaims, while vainly endeavoring to compose himself to rest,
“How many thousand of my poorest subjects
Are at this hour asleep!”
Here the emphatic words thousand, subjects, and asleep are contrasted in idea with their opposites, and if the contrasted ideas were expressed it might be in this way:
While I alone, their sovereign, am doomed to wakefulness.