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Robert Christy, comp. Proverbs, Maxims and Phrases of All Ages. 1887.

Proverb

A man’s life is often builded on a proverb.

A proverb, a true word.German.

A proverb deceives not; the heavens fall not.German.

A proverb is a remnant of the ancient philosophy preserved amidst very many destructions on account of its brevity and fitness for use.Publius Syrus quoting from a work of Aristotle now lost.

A proverb is condensed popular wisdom.Carl Seelbach.

A proverb is much light condensed in one flash.Simmons.

A proverb lies not; its sense only deceives.German.

A proverb—much matter decocted into a few words.Fuller.

A proverb is the child of experience.

A proverb is the experience of half a century, extracted from a dozen folio volumes and compressed in a crystal.

A proverb is the interpretation of the words of the wise.Bible.

A proverb is the wit of one man and the wisdom of many.John Russell.

A wise man who knows proverbs reconciles difficulties.Yoruba.

All the good sense of the world runs into proverbs.

An apologue of Æsop is beyond a syllogism, and proverbs more powerful than demonstration.Brown’s Vulgar Errors.

As the country so the proverb.German.

Cessit in proverbum. (It has become a proverb.)

Generally a fable is a proverb put in action.Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine.

I am proverb’d with a grandsire phrase,
To be candle-holder and looker-on.Shakespeare.

++++Jewels five words long
That on the stretched forefinger of all time
Sparkle forever.Tennyson.

Maxims expressed in a few words and become popular.La Rousse.

Proverbs are the children of experience.

Proverbs are the daughters of daily experience.Dutch.

Proverbs are the echoes of experience.L’ Abbe de St. Pierre.

Proverbs are the jewels of the multitude.Popular Encyclopædia.

Proverbs are the language of the gods.Vico.

Proverbs are the wisdom of ages.German.

Proverbs are the wisdom of the streets.

Proverbs bear age, and he would do well to view himself in them as in a glass.

Proverbs lie on the lips of fools.

Short sentences drawn from long experience.Cervantes.

Short sentences frequently repeated by the people.Johnson.

Short sentences into which as in rules the ancients have compressed life.Johann Agricola, 1558.

Solomon made a book of proverbs, but a book of proverbs never made a Solomon.

The genius, wit and spirit of a nation are discovered in its proverbs.Bacon.

The ingredients of a good proverb are sense, shortness and salt.Howell.

We have many coarse proverbs, but of good meaning.German.

Well-known and well-used dicta framed in a sort of out-of-the-way form and fashion.Erasmus.

When a poor man makes a proverb he does not break it.German.