Max Cryer - Preposterous Proverbs: Why fine words butter no parsnips

Its a tricky thing to define there are so many variables. However, perhaps this is a fair description:

But can we feel sure that everything called a proverb can actually be regarded as wisdom? Only sometimes. All that glisters is not gold.

Cant argue with that.

However, other pithy quips identified as proverbs have less traction, and can be downright dodgy. Sometimes their wisdom might have worked well in a bygone era, but time has not treated them kindly. In the cold clear light of the 21st century, the advice given in some proverbs is open to question. For example:

And these days the camera certainly can lie.

There is also an alarming number of proverbs which blatantly contradict each other. Take your pick:

but

And is

or does

(A 20th century update also exists: Absence makes the heart grow fonder for somebody else.)

Then there are the head-scratching proverbs. What can these examples possibly mean?

Does a cat really have nine lives? No it doesnt. But un-doubtedly there must once have been some reasoning behind the observation.

For several thousand years proverbs have been spoken in a portentous tone, chiselled into marble, embroidered by Jane Austen heroines onto framed linen or posted on handsome internet greetings. The very word itself summons involuntary respect, in spite of the difficulty in defining exactly what it is. But in addition, some pithy epigrams of perceived wisdom have gathered around the margins of the usual definition of proverb. Quotes and slogans, old wives tales and catchphrases even something as simple as the title of a successful book (e.g. Life Begins at Forty) have come into common usage and gained a kind of fragile truth, even if lacking the implied moral authority of traditional historic wisdom.

The present collection scratches the surface of several hundred proverbs, both familiar and obscure, and also includes some adages, maxims and epigrams which have crept into consideration newcomers on the block which carry a certain illusion of inherent advice, albeit sometimes of questionable basis. We take a close look at just how relevant they really are.

And remember:

Yeah, right.

Max Cryer