proverb · Words worth keeping
Make the vine poor, and it will make you rich.
Make the vine poor, and it will make you rich.
Historical period not yet established
Understand the thought
Meaning in plain English
The saying makes a vine’s poverty the route to its keeper’s wealth. It sets reduced provision for one participant beside a promised benefit for another.
What the words are saying
Poor and rich create a reversal that sounds practical but leaves the treatment unspecified. A responsible explanation does not invent a mechanism or advise a cultivation technique. If used as an analogy, the trade-off needs careful scrutiny: an apparent benefit to one party does not justify imposing deprivation on another. The source image concerns a vine, not a rule for treating people.
Everyday example
A reader distinguishes the agricultural image from any claim that withholding resources from workers produces a justified benefit.
When to use it
Use it to examine an undefined vine-growing claim and the limits of its analogy.
What it does not mean
No horticultural technique or economic benefit is independently verified here.
Agent-assisted editorial interpretation. This explains the words; it does not by itself verify their author or earliest origin.
Attribution & collection notes
- Author or tradition
- Traditional
Attribution: traditional - Country attributed
- Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin. - Historical period
- Historical period not yet established
No sufficiently supported historical placement has been established. Import and download dates are not treated as composition dates. - Recorded source
- A Dictionary of English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases
Entry 1705 · Vine
A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.
- Culture
- English