Character.

Meaning: Public goodwill can support a ruler’s position. Calling the people’s affection a lifeguard contrasts trust with protection supplied only by force.

Meaning: The saying gives a good surgeon an eagle’s eye, a lion’s heart and a lady’s hand. Its three images praise observation, courage and a gentle or careful touch.

Meaning: Attend to the faults or responsibilities within your own reach before criticising everyone else. Self-examination can make criticism more responsible.

Meaning: An abundance of talk may be accompanied by little practical follow-through. The saying’s absolute wording warns against confusing speech with achievement, without making a talkative person automatically ineffective or a quiet person dependable.

Meaning: The saying ranks temperance as the best medicine. It gives moderation a medicinal role and places it above other means without supplying a measured comparison.

Meaning: Someone who encourages another person’s wrongdoing can bear serious responsibility. The saying turns attention toward influence rather than only the final actor.

Meaning: A person may betray someone whose work helped them. The roof-thatching image makes ingratitude vivid by turning the helper’s position into a vulnerability.

Meaning: The saying gives a thief enough rope to bring about his own downfall. Its violent image presents harmful conduct as eventually exposing or defeating itself.

Meaning: Regret about being caught may differ from regret about the harm done. The saying asks what an apology or expression of sorrow is actually concerned with.

Meaning: The saying imagines thunder frightening a wrongdoer into honesty. It questions whether conduct changes only under the pressure of a dramatic warning.

Meaning: Take responsibility for a task you can reasonably do yourself. The saying encourages initiative but overstates it if all reliance on others is treated as failure.

Meaning: The phrase calls someone Tom Tell-troth, giving truth-telling the form of a personal name. It can characterise a speaker as direct or eager to tell what he considers true.

Meaning: An intention repeatedly postponed until tomorrow may never become an action. Choose a realistic time or first step instead of letting an endlessly moving future stand in for a commitment.

Editorial context: Restraint in speech does not mean keeping harm secret. Seeking help, reporting problems and expressing disagreement can be necessary.

Meaning: Hold back words that would be better left unsaid. The image of keeping the tongue behind the teeth encourages restraint in speaking, rather than requiring silence about a genuine concern or something that needs to be reported.

Meaning: Words can cause serious harm despite having no physical strength of their own. Recognise the consequences of threats, humiliation or damaging claims rather than dismissing them as mere speech.

Meaning: Words can have consequences for the person who speaks them. The tongue and head divide the act of speaking from the burden that follows.

Meaning: Allowing extra time may be preferable to missing a moment that matters. The exaggerated comparison stresses the consequences of lateness, without making three hours early a sensible rule for every appointment.

Meaning: Judge an action or undertaking by what it produces rather than by its outward show. Look at conduct and results when deciding whether a promising appearance is supported by substance.

Meaning: Actively provoking conflict can make opportunities for it easier to find. The saying warns about searching for a quarrel, without implying that people who experience trouble chose it or are responsible for harm done to them.

Meaning: Criticism does not by itself disprove a true claim. The saying distinguishes hostility toward a statement from the evidence that makes it accurate.

Meaning: An undertaking needs a sound basis of its own. The tub’s bottom pictures the support without which the container cannot fulfil its purpose.

Meaning: Do not present conflicting positions to different people in order to mislead them. The saying criticises duplicity, while allowing honest changes of mind and appropriate differences in how you communicate.

Meaning: A troubled beginning need not prevent a person from developing good judgment and conduct. The saying leaves room for growth beyond an early label.

Meaning: Repeated practice can make an action feel natural. The saying describes familiarity becoming habitual rather than establishing that a habit is fixed or right.