If you keep doing it everyday as regularly as soldiers go through drill, we shall see what will happend and find out if the experiment succeeds. You learn things by saying them over and over and thinking about them until they stay in your mind for ever, and I think it will be the same with Magic. If you keep calling it to come to you and help you, it will get to be part of you and it will stay and do things.

Meaning: The mind is compared to ground that needs deliberate cultivation. The saying encourages useful learning and attention, while its corn-and-thistles contrast should not turn rest, disability or a different way of thinking into evidence of a defective character.

Meaning: Your own mistakes can teach caution, but another person’s experience may offer the same lesson without the same cost. Listen for relevant lessons before repeating an avoidable error.

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.