The collection / 3,980 fragments
Traditional sayings from a documented English collection, with reviewed meanings for an expanding editorial selection.
Meaning: Distance may weaken a mild attachment while making an intense one feel stronger. The contrast between cooling and inflaming describes different possible responses to absence, rather than a dependable rule for measuring love or deciding how relationships should work.
Meaning: A person who is not present can become an easy target for blame because they cannot explain or challenge the account. Be cautious about judgements made without hearing them.
Meaning: People or matters that are absent for a long time may lose their place in everyday attention. The saying describes a risk of being overlooked, without proving that distance ends affection or that a forgotten person has less worth.
Meaning: Painful teeth are compared to troublesome tenants: something housed within your own place can become a persistent source of discomfort.
Meaning: Difficulty may teach practical lessons without bringing material success. Gaining understanding from a setback is different from becoming better off because of it.
Meaning: A difficult period can reveal how a friendship responds to strain. Practical care and reliability may become clearer when support requires effort rather than easy company.
Meaning: Difficulty can expose weaknesses that praise or favourable circumstances leave unnoticed. Adversity is pictured as an unflattering observer, inviting an honest assessment without making hardship necessary for growth or a complete test of someone’s character.
Meaning: Unrequested advice can be as unwelcome as altering someone’s food without asking. Check whether help is wanted before assuming you know what another person needs.
Meaning: People may ask for advice and readily offer it while being less willing to follow it. Consider whether guidance fits the situation, rather than assuming that asking means agreeing to act on every suggestion.
Meaning: Asking for advice achieves little if someone refuses to consider using it. The saying questions the purpose of the request, while leaving room to examine advice critically and reject recommendations that are unsuitable or wrong.
Meaning: Advice offered after an irreversible action cannot prevent what has already happened. Give relevant guidance while someone can still use it, and distinguish prevention from help with what comes next.
Meaning: An undertaking with known hazards may require accepting some exposure to them. Battle and wounds make that point forcefully, without requiring someone to take an unreasonable risk or treating caution as cowardice.
Meaning: What someone feared may have been worse than what actually happened. The comparison can bring perspective after an event, without deciding in advance that a concern is groundless or dismissing the distress of being frightened.
Meaning: The saying places age ahead of honesty in a terse order of precedence. It can be read critically as asking whether seniority is being allowed to outweigh conduct.
Meaning: Old age deserves respect rather than dismissal. The saying honours later life, without proving that age guarantees wisdom, good conduct or authority over another person’s decisions.
Meaning: People working in the same trade may compete or disagree despite their shared occupation. The proverb highlights rivalry among peers, without establishing that cooperation is rare or that professional differences are personal hostility.
Meaning: A settlement may avoid the expense and strain of a prolonged dispute. The proverb favours agreement where it is fair and workable, without making cost a reason to abandon protection, accountability or a legitimate claim.
Meaning: The rhyme presents a spring ague as medicine fit for a king. It gives a feverish illness a surprising positive value rather than simply treating it as misfortune.
Meaning: The saying pictures agues arriving on horseback and departing on foot. It contrasts a rapid onset with a slower imagined recovery through two ways of travelling.
Meaning: Good intentions or empty promises do not supply the practical necessities of life. Living by the air pictures trying to manage without real support, drawing attention to resources rather than blaming someone who lacks them.
Meaning: Preserving available resources can be more useful than hoping for a miraculous way to obtain wealth. The saying praises avoiding needless loss, while recognising that saving depends on having something left after genuine needs are met.
Meaning: The saying praises good ale as food, drink and clothing at once. Its extravagant list imagines one comfort supplying several kinds of provision.
Meaning: Purchases often bring unwanted material along with what is wanted. The saying contrasts stones, bones and shells with an approving claim that ale contains only the desired purchase.
Meaning: A new attraction can persuade people to find money or time they seemed unwilling to spare before. The new ale-house image comments on enthusiasm for novelty, rather than proving that everyone can afford it.