Absence makes the heart grow fonder

The Roman poet Sextus Propertius gave us the earliest form of this saying in Elegies:

“Always toward absent lovers love’s tide stronger flows.”

The contemporary version appears in The Pocket Magazine of Classic and Polite Literature, 1832, in a piece by a Miss Stickland:

‘Tis absense, however, that makes the heart grow fonder.

As with many proverbial sayings there is another that expresses the exact opposite point of view – ‘out of sight, out of mind‘.

‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder’ was also source material for the lewd wordplay:

“Absinthe makes the fart grow stronger”.

See also: the List of Proverbs.