Meaning: The saying links early effort with advancement and imagines success allowing more leisure. Its clock times are memorable rhetoric rather than a universal schedule.
The collection / 9,806 fragments
Wealth.
Explore passages mentioning wealth, money, rich. 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: The saying prefers Simon Noland’s lower-status title to Humphrey Hadland’s gentlemanly one. The contrasting names suggest present lack of land beside land once held, while social labels complicate the comparison.
Meaning: Exchange can generate income. Making trade the mother of money highlights one route to material gain rather than a complete explanation of wealth.
Meaning: The saying treats a tradesperson’s lack of gain as a loss. It judges merely standing still as insufficient within the commercial activity it imagines.
Meaning: The saying predicts opposite growth from setting trees poor or rich. It recommends the apparently less favourable start and warns against the apparently richer one.
Meaning: The saying expects a good goose to lay by Valentine’s Day, with two earlier eggs making it rewarding to its keeper. A calendar milestone is paired with a judgment of usefulness.
Meaning: The saying makes a vine’s poverty the route to its keeper’s wealth. It sets reduced provision for one participant beside a promised benefit for another.
Meaning: Work performed deserves recognition and agreed compensation. The saying encourages a person not to treat a request for payment as shameful.
Meaning: Useful, sound goods can attract buyers more readily. The saying encourages attention to quality while exaggerating its ability to secure a quick sale.
Meaning: Using resources carefully can reduce avoidable shortages later. Keeping what is useful and avoiding unnecessary waste may make existing supplies go further when circumstances become more difficult.
Meaning: Deliberately wasting usable resources can leave fewer available when they are needed later. Consider foreseeable needs before discarding or consuming something without a worthwhile purpose.
Meaning: Wealth can be invoked as an excuse for foolish conduct. The saying questions a privilege that lets material position substitute for accountability.
Meaning: A small or appealing object can cost more than its real value to you. Consider what you give up to obtain it, rather than letting desire alone decide what is worth paying.
Meaning: A caring partnership and wellbeing can matter more than material possessions. The saying’s language of a wife as wealth needs a reading that preserves her independent dignity.
Meaning: Occasional unexpected gains may not provide a dependable basis for ongoing needs. The windfall image questions reliance on benefits that arrive by chance.
Meaning: Good judgement may matter more than possessing a large amount of money. The comparison values how a person understands and acts, without making hardship desirable or dismissing the practical importance of resources.
Meaning: A wish alone does not supply what is needed. Turning wishes into birds makes an impossible abundance expose the gap between desire and provision.
Meaning: The rhyme imagines beggars riding if wishes would hold or endure. It contrasts a desired improvement with the limits of wanting it alone.
Meaning: Wishing does not turn an unmet need into a resource. Imaginary butter-cakes make the saying’s contrast between hope and actual provision tangible.
Meaning: Ingenuity alone may not sustain an undertaking that lacks necessary resources. Wit and stock contrast a clever approach with the means that let it work.
Meaning: Having enough resources for basic needs can hold off immediate hardship. The wolf-at-the-door image describes a level of protection, rather than wealth, complete security or a guarantee that difficulties will not return.
Meaning: An attempt to gain an advantage can leave the seeker worse off. Going for wool and returning shorn reverses the expected benefit.
Meaning: Words may be plentiful while the means to achieve a result are still missing. The sand-and-land contrast stresses practical resources, without making speech worthless or money the only source of useful action.
Meaning: Each participant pays an agreed share rather than relying on one person to cover everyone. The regional label belongs to the saying and is not evidence of a universal local custom.
