As contraries are known by contraries, so is the delight of presence best known by the torments of absence.

The saying hinges on an old philosophical commonplace: we grasp a thing most vividly by experiencing its opposite. Applied to human attachment, it argues that the sweetness of being with someone (or having something) is not fully apprehended until separation makes the lack painful. Absence functions as a kind of negative illumination, sharpening perception and intensifying value. The line also implies a moral-psychological lesson: pleasure and pain are interdependent in our understanding, and emotional suffering can disclose what we truly prize. In a broader literary register, it belongs to the tradition of consolatory reflections on love and loss, where deprivation becomes the measure of desire.