Meaning: The saying pairs a cold complexion with good condition. It gives a favourable judgment to one described quality without explaining the criterion or setting.
The collection / 38,838 fragments
Knowledge.
Explore passages mentioning knowledge, know. 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: Distance can change what news reaches you, so information about a place may become more noticeable elsewhere. The saying presents a paradox about circulation and perspective, rather than establishing that distant reports are more accurate.
Meaning: The saying denies courts an almanac. As a qualified analogy, it can suggest that expectations about ordinary timing do not settle what happens in a courtly or legal setting.
Meaning: Criticism can help refine work that someone else has made. The clothes-brushing comparison gives the critic a supporting role, without assuming every criticism improves the work or that commenting is equivalent to creating it.
Meaning: The saying pictures repeated washing failing to whiten a crow. As an analogy, it can distinguish an inherent characteristic from something superficial that effort can remove.
Meaning: Two differently described situations may leave a person in the same difficulty. Being in darkness and lacking light are equivalent images, so changing the description does not supply what is missing.
Meaning: Groping in darkness pictures acting without enough understanding and encountering an unwanted result. The saying encourages seeking clarity before proceeding, while allowing that complete information may be unavailable and that a carefully chosen exploratory step can still be useful.
Meaning: A small opening can let understanding or possibility emerge. The daylight image values a limited beginning, without promising that one clue reveals the whole situation or that every difficulty will quickly disappear.
Meaning: The richest result may require going beyond an easy surface approach. Deep water becomes an image of work or understanding that takes more effort to reach, without guaranteeing a better outcome.
Meaning: The saying assigns rest after dinner and a walk after supper. Its paired instruction gives two meals different follow-up activities.
Meaning: The saying gives understanding a disease a major place in addressing it. Half the cure is an emphatic share, not a measured clinical result.
Meaning: A specialist may benefit from another person’s observations. Different perspectives can add relevant information, without making every opinion equally informed or replacing the expertise the situation requires.
Meaning: The saying prefers an old doctor and a young lawyer. It assigns different age ideals to two professions without explaining the comparison.
Meaning: The saying makes the ash leafing before the oak a sign of past or future drought. Its broad time window lets the same observation refer backward or forward.
Meaning: The saying suggests people sometimes speak truth while drunk. Often leaves room for variation, but the claim does not make intoxication a test of honesty.
Meaning: The saying personifies a dry cough as a trumpeter announcing death. Its severe warning makes a symptom stand for an expected outcome.
Meaning: A conversation may be overheard even when the people speaking assume it is private. The personified walls warn about unintended listeners, without proving that someone is actually listening or that every setting is unsafe.
Meaning: A claim may be accepted more readily when the action described seems easy to imagine. The saying warns that apparent feasibility can encourage belief, without making an easy task proof that a reported event actually happened.
Meaning: The saying recommends eating a small amount before drinking. Its brief instruction gives an order of activities without explaining the reason or identifying the drink.
Meaning: A person who speaks loudly or confidently may have little substance behind the noise. Judge what is said by its evidence and usefulness rather than its volume.
Meaning: The saying links a red evening and grey morning with a fair day. It combines two sky descriptions into one favourable expectation.
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: The saying allows touching an eye only with an elbow. Its difficult condition can function as an indirect instruction to leave the eye alone.
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.
