The collection / 368 fragments
Explore passages mentioning love. Topic suggestions use transparent word matching, not scholarly classification. Editorial meanings and lexical matches are discovery aids, not independent authentication of a quotation.
Meaning: Strong affection can sometimes be difficult to put into words. The saying notices a possible gap between feeling and expression, but silence is not proof of love, and difficulty speaking should not replace attention to someone’s need for clear communication.
Meaning: The saying imagines lovers living on love as larks live on leeks. The playful comparison questions whether affection alone can supply the practical needs of life.
Meaning: A harmful partnership can create repeated difficulties in daily life. The spring image makes one troubled relationship a source from which other problems flow.
Meaning: A supportive partnership can make difficulties easier to carry and pleasures richer to share. Halving and doubling give mutual support a memorable numerical image.
Meaning: The saying expresses a belief that marriage has a providential or sacred basis. It can convey reverence for a bond without proving that any particular match is destined.
Meaning: Choosing a relationship chiefly for wealth may create obligations or dependence that restrict personal choice. Selling liberty makes the material gain sound like a costly exchange.
Meaning: A shared life benefits from considering practical arrangements beforehand. The house pictures a place and means for the partnership to live.
Meaning: The saying warns against marrying in May because older sayings call it unlucky. Its appeal to inherited words is not evidence that the month harms a relationship.
Meaning: A partnership shaped by unequal social power may become a relationship of command. The saying warns that a supposed advantage can carry a loss of equality.
Meaning: Marriage can be shaped by material considerations as well as affection. The saying highlights that influence while overstating it as the whole matter.
Meaning: Affection can make a loved person’s presence especially welcome. Sweet breath gives closeness and comfort a sensory image.
Meaning: The saying presents a mother’s care as enduring even as time passes. It is an affectionate image of lasting concern, not a guarantee that every mother-child relationship is loving or unchanged.
Meaning: Polite words are easy to offer, but they have little value when unsupported by considerate conduct. Look beyond courteous speech to how someone actually treats others.
Editorial context: This blames household disorder for a husband’s absence. Domestic difficulties do not remove responsibility for his own choices.
Meaning: The saying blames disorder at home for a husband’s absence or wandering. It shifts attention towards domestic conditions while overlooking the husband’s own choices and shared responsibility for the household.
Meaning: Care for your neighbour while keeping sensible boundaries. Goodwill and cooperation do not require giving up every distinction between your own space, needs and responsibilities and theirs.
Meaning: A difficult or dangerous moment can reveal who is willing to give practical support. Love is measured here through conduct under pressure rather than declarations alone.
Meaning: A peaceful atmosphere can be deeply valuable alongside affection. The saying praises quietness, without requiring silence at all costs or treating disagreement and a person’s need to speak as failures of love.
Meaning: Affection can create influence through willing connection rather than force. The kingdom-without-a-sword image praises that possibility, without treating love as ownership or excusing pressure presented as care.
Meaning: Self-interest can interfere with a person’s judgement about themselves. The small obstruction in the eye suggests a distorted view, while leaving room for healthy self-respect and for fair criticism of an actual decision.
Meaning: The saying assumes a son’s marriage weakens his family bond while a daughter’s bond remains. A critical reading exposes that gendered expectation rather than treating it as a rule.
Meaning: A secret or forbidden affection may seem especially exciting. The stolen image must not be used to romanticise contact without consent.
Meaning: Attend to bodily needs, close relationships and conscience rather than assuming any can be neglected without consequence. The list joins practical care with moral reflection.
Meaning: The saying imagines exceptional reliability through a horse that never stumbles and a wife who never complains. Its standard of perfect performance and silence needs questioning.
Meaning: Public goodwill can support a ruler’s position. Calling the people’s affection a lifeguard contrasts trust with protection supplied only by force.