Love.

Meaning: The saying imagines a dark man especially attractive to a fair woman. Its jewel metaphor praises a contrast in appearance from the imagined observer’s perspective.

Meaning: The saying advises winning a mother’s goodwill when seeking a relationship with her daughter. It treats family approval as useful, but such approval cannot replace the daughter’s own wishes and consent.

Meaning: The saying places execution and marriage under destiny. It joins a severe event and a relationship decision through the belief that both are predetermined.

Meaning: Even a creature regarded as troublesome may still deserve basic kindness. The crust of bread provides a modest image of care that is not reserved only for those considered good or useful.

Meaning: Do not add burdens to someone already overwhelmed. Pouring more water onto a drowned mouse gives a stark image of effort that cannot help and may only worsen an already hopeless situation.

Meaning: The saying encourages courage in seeking a hoped-for relationship, but frames a woman as a prize to win. A constructive reading values honest initiative while rejecting conquest: another person’s consent, interest and freedom to decline remain essential.

Meaning: A relationship may need trust and dependable conduct to support that trust. The saying connects affection with steadiness, without demanding unquestioning belief, fixed roles or staying in a harmful relationship.

Meaning: Possessiveness and a demand for dominance can make equal companionship difficult. Love and lordship are pictured as unwilling to share their place with others.

Meaning: A partner’s qualities matter more than the wealth attached to them. The contrast between fortune in and on a person redirects attention from possessions to character.

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: Removing G from glass gives lass, and removing L from lass gives ass. The wordplay mocks a person who becomes foolish through romantic attachment, but the verbal trick does not prove its judgment about love.

Meaning: Helping others is presented as worthwhile even without an immediate reward. The saying encourages generosity, but its promise of never losing is too broad if it denies the real effort, limits or risks involved in a favour.

Meaning: Wealth expected through marriage can bring demands and disagreements as well as apparent advantages. The bed represents the shared relationship, asking whether attention to resources has displaced consideration of the people and their expectations.

Meaning: The saying exaggerates the misery of an unhappy marriage by comparing it with severe punishment. It stresses the importance of a workable relationship, while rejecting the idea that either violence or lasting distress must be accepted.

Meaning: People can care for one another while disagreeing in thought or judgement. A difference of opinion need not erase shared affection, respect or purpose.

Meaning: The saying compares love with a cough as something that may make itself noticeable. It suggests that feelings can show through conduct, but appearances do not prove affection, and neither love nor illness should be inferred confidently from this comparison.

Editorial context: This assigns wisdom and gentleness by marital gender. Both qualities can be expected of every participant.

Meaning: The saying assigns wisdom to the husband and gentleness to the wife as complementary ideals. It is a gendered allocation of virtues, not evidence that either quality belongs only to one partner.

Meaning: The saying imagines a suitable partner for everyone. It can offer hope about companionship, but its promise is not guaranteed, and its paired male-and-female labels should not prescribe identity, require a relationship or override anyone’s freely chosen interest.

Meaning: The saying urges loyalty to family through both easy and difficult circumstances. A careful reading supports dependable care without making kinship a reason to conceal wrongdoing, accept harm or deny someone’s boundaries.

Meaning: The saying contrasts a large amount of legal contest with little affection. It expresses concern that an adversarial dispute can strain relationships, but it should not deny the need for legal protection or imply that asserting a right proves a lack of care.

Meaning: Strong longing can express a strong sense that something is missing. The paired words connect desire with a felt absence.

Meaning: Affection can reveal whether admirable principles are carried into everyday treatment of another person. Love is compared with a test of virtue, while leaving room to judge character through conduct beyond a close relationship as well.

Meaning: Affection can exist in modest homes as well as in grand surroundings. The cottage and court reject wealth or rank as a requirement for love, without idealising hardship or claiming that material conditions never affect relationships.

Meaning: Devotion should not require a person to lose their life or abandon their own worth. The saying challenges an ideal of love proved by total self-destruction.