Traditional Sayings Quotes

A proverb is one man’s wit and all men’s wisdom.

The wise make proverbs, and fools repeat them.

Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality.

There's an old saying. Never send a boy to do a man's job, send a lady.

A year at the breast is quite enough; children who are suckled longer are said to grow stupid, and I am all for popular sayings.

Proverbs may be said to be the abridgment of wisdom.

Proverbs save us the trouble of thinking. What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.

I like the old wisdom--puns, riddles, spells, proverbs.

Listen carefully to what country people call mother wit. In those homely sayings are couched the collective wisdom of generations.

Proverbs are potted wisdom.

The phrase "may you live in interesting times" is the lowest in a trilogy of Chinese curses that continue "may you come to the attention of those in authority" and finish with "may the gods give you everything you ask for." I have no idea about its authenticity.

Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.

A country can be judged by the quality of its proverbs.

The wise men of old have sent most of their morality down the stream of time in the light skiff of apothegm or epigram; and the proverbs of nations, which embody the commonsense of nations, have the brisk concussion of the most sparkling wit.

This character in the film, these things that he says which sound like advice and wise things, they are very common for Orientals. It's all the tradition.

Proverbs may not improperly be called the philosophy of the common people.

I believe there's no proverb but what is true; they are all so many sentences and maxims drawn from experience, the universal mother of sciences.

Proverbs, like the sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of the intuitions. That which the droning world, chained to appearances, will not allow the realist to say in his own words, it will suffer him to say in proverbs without contradiction.

Often a quite assified remark becomes sanctified by use and petrified by custom; it is then a permanency, its term of activity a geologic period.