The collection / 2,056 fragments
Traditional sayings from a documented English collection, with reviewed meanings for an expanding editorial selection.
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 predicts Sunday sorrow for someone who sings on Friday. It turns enjoyment on one day into an omen about another.
Meaning: The saying treats Friday as a sign of Sunday and Sunday as a sign of the whole week. It extends a short observation into a much longer expectation.
Meaning: The saying predicts failure for a voyage begun on Friday. The rhyme treats a weekday as an unlucky condition without establishing a causal connection.
Meaning: Building a friendship can take longer than damaging it. Treat trust with care, because a careless act may undo a relationship that took repeated effort to establish.
Meaning: A friend’s support during a difficult time can reveal the strength of the friendship. Reliability when help is inconvenient often matters more than agreeable company when everything is easy.
Meaning: A person who places ultimate value in a relationship with God can feel that ordinary losses do not take away what matters most.
Meaning: Do not treat a friend, or yourself within the friendship, as something of little value. Mutual respect helps prevent familiarity from becoming careless use of one another.
Meaning: Prosperity may attract companions who are less willing to stay during difficulty. The contrast asks whose friendship includes support when advantages disappear, rather than treating its numerical claim as a measured fact.
Meaning: Friends can cause difficulty even when they mean to help. This exclamation can describe misplaced advice, interference or an awkward favour, without implying that friendship itself is dangerous or that every friend has bad intentions.
Meaning: Pleasant words do not by themselves establish friendship. Look for dependable and considerate conduct rather than assuming that flattery or an agreeable manner proves someone cares for you.
Meaning: A wish to possess or rule can interfere with friendship. The saying invites scrutiny of exclusivity and power in relationships rather than treating them as unavoidable.
Meaning: The speaker places trust in divine purpose above an apparent threat. Frost represents a force that might destroy something, while God’s will is pictured as stronger.
Meaning: The saying claims that March and May will have matching numbers of frosts. Counting events in one month is made a prediction for another.
Meaning: The saying makes bringing the leaf to the grave a condition of having fruit. It contrasts a desired yield with a leaf being put away or buried.
Meaning: Results can reflect the conditions and practices from which they develop. The tree-and-fruit comparison asks what produced an outcome, without making one result a complete judgement of a person or a rule about inherited worth.
Meaning: Do not remove what a later result needs in order to develop. Plucking the flower while wanting the fruit pictures a short-term action that defeats the benefit being sought.
Meaning: Care with resources now may make later life less burdensome. The easy chair pictures comfort made possible by earlier restraint.
Meaning: An attempt to escape one difficulty can lead into a worse one. The frying-pan and fire contrast warns about an unexamined alternative, without implying that staying in the first situation is always the safest or best choice.
Meaning: Removing what keeps a problem going can help bring it to an end. Fuel and flame picture cause and continuation, encouraging attention to the sustaining condition rather than only the visible disturbance.
Meaning: Material resources can give someone more confidence or influence in a conversation. The full-purse image notices that advantage, but it should not make wealth a measure of truth, wisdom or entitlement to speak over people with fewer resources.
Meaning: Wealth can attract attention that looks like friendship. Notice whether people value your company and wellbeing, or mainly the benefits they receive from being near you.
Meaning: The rhyme places hunger and cold beneath furze, but silver and gold beneath broom. It assigns two plant settings opposite conditions of hardship and abundance.
Meaning: A remark or action that touches an existing hurt may provoke a strong response. The sore horse flinching asks for attention to sensitivity, without making a reaction proof of guilt or a reason to avoid necessary discussion.