Proverbs of All Nations, Compared, Explained, and Illustrated

To be what the Romans called "double-tongued,"[504] or, in French phrase, "To wear a coat of two parishes."[505] Formerly the parishes in France were bound to supply the army wi...

Edmund Plowden, an eminent lawyer in Queen Elizabeth's time, was asked by a neighbour what remedy there was in law against the owner of some hogs that had trespassed on the inqu...

A traveller in America, inquiring his way, was told there were two roads, one long, and the other short, and that it mattered not which he took. Surprised at such a direction, h...

Let your expenditure be proportioned to your means. "Let every one stretch his leg according to his coverlet" (Spanish).[303] "According to the arm be the blood-letting" (French...

And "He is a bad manager of honey" who does not help himself in the same way (French).[736] The rule applies to all who have the fingering of good things, whether in a public or...

The Spaniards express this popular belief by a striking figure: "The mother of God appears to fools."[223] The Germans say, "Fortune and women are fond of fools;"[224] and the c...

A bunch of twigs, or a wisp of hay or straw hung up at a roadside house, is a sign that drink is sold within. This custom, which still lingers in the cider-making counties of th...

The mixon is the heap of manure in the farmyard. The proverb means that it is better not to go far from home in search of a wife--advice as old as the Greek poet Hesiod, who has...

What is innate is not to be eradicated by force of education or self-discipline: these may modify the outward manifestations of a man's nature, but not transmute that nature its...

Cupar is a town in Fife, and that is all that Scotch paræmiologists condescend to tell us about it. I suppose there is some special reason why insisting on going to Cupar above...

Which clocks disagree to this day. (See _Household Words_, No. 410.) "The city time measurers are so far behind each other that the last chime of eight has hardly fallen on the...

"Even the best proverb, though often the expression of the widest experience in the choicest language, can be thoroughly misapplied. It cannot embrace the whole of the subject,...

Pacha, 101 Pains, 71, 72 Pan, 120 Paradise, 217 Paris, 226 Path, 123 Patience, 66, 68, 69 Pence, 75 Penny, 54, 75, 84 Peralvillo, 184 Perforce, 90 Perhaps, 86 Perseverance, 69 P...