Meaning: The saying tells someone to rub a sore eye with an elbow. The awkward instruction can be read as an indirect way of discouraging rubbing rather than a practical method.
The collection / 30,842 fragments
Mind.
Explore passages mentioning mind, thought, thoughts. Topic suggestions use transparent word matching, not scholarly classification. Reviewed editorial meanings may also connect entries to this topic; those assignments are labelled separately from word matching.
Meaning: Financial worry can show in a person’s expression. The empty purse pictures a shortage of resources, and wrinkles give the strain a visible form.
Meaning: Resenting another person’s advantage does not by itself improve your own situation. Notice what you need or can learn instead of treating someone else’s success as a resource you have lost.
Meaning: Harm can result from carelessness as well as deliberate cruelty. Good intentions do not remove the need to consider what an action may do to others.
Meaning: Something unknown may not cause the distress that learning about it would bring. The saying comments on awareness and feeling, without making ignorance protective in every case or excusing the concealment of information someone needs.
Meaning: An event may not produce immediate sadness while a person remains unaware of it. The saying links knowledge and feeling, without claiming that unseen harm disappears or that concealment is a proper way to prevent grief.
Meaning: Something already pleasing need not be improved by decoration. The face and paint picture an existing quality that extra embellishment may not help.
Meaning: Personal liking can matter more to someone than conventional beauty. What appeals to a person need not be the thing that others rate most attractive.
Meaning: Imagination or personal preference can strongly influence how something is seen and pursued. The saying recognises the reach of fancy, without making an imagined possibility true or dismissing every imaginative idea as unreliable.
Meaning: Obtaining a desired result may involve some inconvenience. Be willing to do the necessary work, while checking that the cost is proportionate and the method is reasonable.
Meaning: One person’s poorly considered action can encourage others to repeat it. The saying asks how an example spreads, without assuming a crowd is always mistaken or labelling people as incapable of better judgement.
Meaning: An impulsive action may be taken before its purpose or consequences have been considered. The quickly released projectile warns against mistaking a fast response for good judgement, without making speed itself foolish.
Meaning: A restriction can make something seem especially desirable. Sweetness pictures that attraction, without proving that every forbidden thing is valuable or that wanting it makes a rule worth breaking.
Meaning: The saying recommends relinquishing resentment, forgetting a wrong and forgiving as a path towards a happier life. That is an aspiration, not a guarantee or a duty to excuse ongoing harm.
Meaning: The phrase urges leaving a wrong behind rather than repeatedly returning to it. Forgiving and forgetting are separate possibilities, and neither should be demanded as proof that someone has dealt with harm correctly.
Meaning: The verse separates what can be changed from what cannot, suggesting that worry alone resolves neither. Its useful reading considers available action and unavoidable limits, without claiming that feelings are voluntary or that a wise person never experiences distress.
Meaning: The saying contrasts gladness with what it calls madness, claiming that one seldom leads to the other. It gives a cheerful disposition a protective role without evidence supplied here.
Meaning: The saying pictures restrained grief bursting the heart. Its forceful image expresses the pressure of sorrow kept unspoken or unacknowledged.
Meaning: The phrase joins watching for harm with catching harm. Its repeated word makes attention and an unwanted encounter seem connected, while the exact relation is unstated.
Meaning: A person’s words may reveal what occupies their thoughts or feelings. Heart and tongue connect inner concerns with speech, without making every remark a complete or reliable account of what someone believes.
Meaning: A person has direct access to experiences and intentions that others may not see. That perspective deserves attention, while self-knowledge can still be incomplete and benefit from honest reflection or feedback.
Meaning: People often have a favourite interest or recurring subject. Recognising it can help explain what repeatedly attracts their attention without reducing them to that one enthusiasm.
Meaning: The saying claims that hope can make someone more humble than despair does. Expecting something still to come may place a person in a position of waiting or dependence.
Meaning: Hope can sustain someone through a difficult period by leaving room for a better possibility. The saying recognises its emotional value without proving that the hoped-for outcome will arrive.
