Mind.

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: 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: 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.

Meaning: The saying praises allowing anger to pass rather than keeping a grievance alive. Its moral judgement is too simple: lasting anger does not by itself show that someone lacks good character.

Meaning: The saying contrasts an Argus-like watcher at home with a mole abroad. It pictures someone sharply observant in familiar surroundings but much less perceptive elsewhere.

Meaning: A difficult day can cast a shadow over the evening that follows. The saying expresses how trouble carries on in experience, but its word never is an exaggeration: later rest, support or a change of circumstances can still help.

Meaning: The saying calls Sir John Barleycorn the strongest knight. In the checked literary context, barley and its drink take the form of a powerful person.

Meaning: Do not worry more about a small loss than about a larger loss that includes it. Keep the relative importance of what is at stake in view when deciding where attention belongs.