50 Fun Facts About Proverbs

Which word stood where 'curiosity' now sits in the cat proverb that Ben Jonson printed in 1598?

Care, meaning worry, killed the cat in Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humour and in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing; 'curiosity' only took over in the 1800s.

'Money is the root of all evil' drops which word from 1 Timothy 6:10, which condemns 'the ___ of money'?

Love of money, not money itself, is 'the root of all evil' in the King James text; Paul's Greek word is philargyria, literally silver-loving.

Which bomber's manifesto gave him away partly by using 'eat your cake and have it too', the older word order?

Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, had written the reversed form in a letter to his mother, and FBI linguist James Fitzgerald's match helped name him.

Fred R. Barnard coined 'a picture is worth a thousand words' in 1921 for a journal serving which trade?

Advertising man Barnard called the line a Chinese proverb 'so that people would take it seriously', and it is still pinned on Confucius.

Which First Lady's 1996 book took its title from the proverb 'It takes a village to raise a child'?

Hillary Clinton's It Takes a Village called the line an African proverb, yet no evidence ties that exact saying to any African culture.

'An apple a day keeps the doctor away' was first recorded in 1866 in Pembrokeshire, in which country?

Wales supplied the first printed version: 'Eat an apple on going to bed, and you'll keep the doctor from earning his bread.'

'May you live in interesting times' is billed as a curse from which country, which has no such saying?

China has no known equivalent expression; the 'curse' may descend from Joseph Chamberlain's 1898 line that 'we are living in most interesting times'.

Which 'biblical' saying, coined by Algernon Sidney in 1698, do 81% of Americans believe is in scripture?

'God helps those who help themselves' is nowhere in the Bible; Sidney gave it its wording and Poor Richard's Almanack carried it in 1736.

Which tag was added to 'Jack of all trades' in the 1700s, turning a compliment into a put-down?

'Master of none' shows up in 18th-century print, while the longer 'but oftentimes better than a master of one' is a recent extension, not the 'original'.

'Trust, but verify', Ronald Reagan's refrain at every meeting with Gorbachev, is a proverb in which language?

Russian 'doveryay, no proveryay' rhymes, and the historian Suzanne Massie taught it to Reagan before the 1987 INF Treaty signing.

Which US president called 'speak softly and carry a big stick' a West African proverb, on little evidence?

Theodore Roosevelt first wrote the line in a January 1900 letter as governor of New York, then made it foreign policy at the 1901 Minnesota State Fair.

'This too shall pass', a tale of a king's ring that Abraham Lincoln retold in 1859, came from which country's poets?

Persia's medieval Sufi poets, among them Attar of Nishapur, told of a king given a ring inscribed with the words to temper both joy and grief.

'It ain't over till the fat lady sings' evokes Brünnhilde's long farewell in an opera cycle by which composer?

Richard Wagner's Götterdämmerung closes the Ring cycle with Brünnhilde's farewell; the line itself was first printed in 1976, quoting Texas Tech's Ralph Carpenter.

'The nail that sticks out gets hammered down', the answer to 'the squeaky wheel gets the grease', comes from where?

Japan's 'deru kugi wa utareru' warns that standing out invites criticism, while the American line, usually credited to humorist Josh Billings around 1870, promises that complaining gets you served.

'Good fences make good neighbors' is repeated twice by a stone-hauling neighbour in a 1914 poem by which American?

Robert Frost's 'Mending Wall' actually doubts the line: its narrator insists 'something there is that doesn't love a wall'.

'The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men' comes from a 1785 poem written after the poet ploughed up a nest, by whom?

Robert Burns's 'To a Mouse' came from turning up a nest at Mossgiel Farm, and its line later gave John Steinbeck the title Of Mice and Men.

'Fools rush in where angels fear to tread' and 'to err is human' come from a 1711 poem by which English poet?

Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism also gave us 'a little learning is a dangerous thing', which is routinely misquoted as 'a little knowledge'.

'What does not kill me makes me stronger' is maxim eight in Twilight of the Idols, an 1889 book by which philosopher?

Friedrich Nietzsche filed it under 'Maxims and Arrows' as a lesson 'out of life's school of war', and expanded on the idea in Ecce Homo.

'Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely' comes from an 1887 letter to a bishop by whom?

Lord Acton went on to tell Bishop Mandell Creighton that 'Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority'.

'A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step' is chapter 64 of the Tao Te Ching, by which sage?

Laozi's line literally says the journey 'starts beneath one's feet', and it is constantly misattributed to his contemporary Confucius.

'Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater' entered English in 1849 from which language, recorded there in 1512?

German 'das Kind mit dem Bade ausschütten' came with a 1512 woodcut of a woman tipping an infant out with the wash water, in Thomas Murner's Narrenbeschwörung.

'No such thing as a free lunch' mocks a 19th-century come-on by which American businesses, whose free food was salty?

Saloons fed drinkers ham, cheese and salted crackers so they would buy more beer; Friedman's 1975 book title turned the line into economics.

Which squire, briefly governor of the 'island' Barataria, peppers Cervantes's novel with ironic Spanish proverbs?

Sancho Panza's sayings are so characteristic that they have a name, sanchismos, and his 'island' is a fictional fief dreamed up as a duke's prank.

'Every cloud has a silver lining' grew from the 1634 masque Comus, by which poet who later wrote Paradise Lost?

John Milton asked 'did a sable cloud / Turn forth her silver lining on the night?', and the optimist's proverb grew out of that image.

'Knowledge is power' is credited to which English philosopher, whose 1597 Latin runs 'ipsa scientia potestas est'?

Francis Bacon's phrase sits in his Meditationes Sacrae; the exact 'scientia potentia est' belongs to the 1668 Latin Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes.

Withals's 1574 dictionary said fasting was 'a great remedy' for which illness, seeding 'feed a cold, starve a ___'?

Fever was to be starved and a cold fed, said the old advice; modern medicine backs neither and prescribes rest and fluids for both.

In Britain's 'Red sky at night, ___ delight', whose delight is it, where Americans say sailors'?

Shepherds' delight is the British form and sailors' the American, and the forecast is old enough for Jesus to cite it in Matthew 16.

'Don't count your chickens before they hatch' comes from a fable about a daydreaming girl carrying what?

Milk fills the pail of the daydreaming milkmaid, who imagines eggs, chicks and finally a foal, then skips for joy and spills the lot.

Which animals 'also fall from trees' in a well-known Japanese proverb meaning that even experts slip up?

Monkeys are the experts in question; the Japanese saying is the stock reminder that anyone, however practised, can make a mistake.

Which word completes 'If wishes were horses, ___ would ride', recorded in Scots in 1628 as 'pure men wald ride'?

Beggars would ride, and the nursery version keeps going: 'If turnips were watches, I'd wear one by my side.'

'Remember that time is money' opens a 1748 'Advice to a Young Tradesman' by which American polymath?

Benjamin Franklin was repeating a line already in print in 1719, when the Whig paper The Free-Thinker had a wife 'inculcate' it to her husband.

'Know thyself' was carved at the temple of Apollo in which Greek sanctuary, beside the maxim 'nothing too much'?

Delphi's maxims were traditionally credited to the Seven Sages, with 'know thyself' most often pinned on Chilon of Sparta.

'Carpe diem', literally 'pluck the day', was first urged in an ode of 23 BC by which Roman poet?

Horace's full line, 'carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero', adds 'put very little trust in tomorrow'.

Which Hamlet character, later stabbed through a tapestry, advises his son 'neither a borrower nor a lender be'?

Polonius hands the maxims to Laertes, and Hamlet later runs him through behind an arras, mistaking his voice for Claudius's.

Which word did Shakespeare use instead of 'glitters' in The Merchant of Venice's 'All that ___ is not gold'?

'All that glisters is not gold' is the scroll the Prince of Morocco finds inside the golden casket, and Chaucer had 'Hyt is not al golde that glareth' two centuries earlier.

'Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer', AFI's 58th greatest movie quote, comes from which 1974 film?

The Godfather Part II, Francis Ford Coppola's sequel, gave the line its fame, and AFI placed it on its 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes list in 2005.

'No man is an island' and 'for whom the bell tolls' both come from 1624 prose meditations by which English poet-priest?

John Donne's Meditation XVII, from Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, later handed Ernest Hemingway the title For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Which bird 'does not make a spring' in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, as a fable about a sold cloak explains?

A swallow seen too early fools a spendthrift into selling his cloak for one last bet, in the fable invented to explain the proverb; English says 'summer'.

Which English author coined 'the pen is mightier than the sword' for his 1839 play Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy?

Edward Bulwer-Lytton gave the line to his cardinal, though the Assyrian sage Ahiqar had 'the word is mightier than the sword' some 2,500 years earlier.

'A rolling stone gathers no moss' spread through the Adagia, a proverb collection of 1500 by which Dutch humanist?

Erasmus printed it in Greek and Latin; the line is usually credited to Publilius Syrus, and the mossless image later named a Muddy Waters song and then the Rolling Stones.

Which 1782 French novel of seduction is wrongly credited with 'revenge is a dish best served cold'?

Les Liaisons dangereuses never says it; the idea reached English through an 1846 translation of Eugène Sue's novel Mathilde, 'la vengeance se mange très bien froide'.

'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned' paraphrases a couplet spoken by Zara in which 1697 tragedy by William Congreve?

The Mourning Bride also opens with 'Music has charms to soothe a savage breast', which is routinely misquoted as 'savage beast'.

'Give a man a fish, teach a man to fish' entered English in the 1885 novel Mrs. Dymond, by which novelist's daughter?

Anne Thackeray Ritchie, daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray, wrote 'If you give a man a fish he is hungry again in an hour. If you teach him to catch a fish you do him a good turn.'

'The road to hell is paved with good intentions' is usually pinned on which 12th-century French abbot, rightly or not?

Bernard of Clairvaux gets the credit, probably wrongly, for 'Hell is full of good wishes or desires'; Samuel Johnson later snapped 'Sir, hell is paved with good intentions'.

Thomas Carlyle put 'speech is silver, silence is golden' into English, crediting an inscription from which country?

Switzerland was Carlyle's unexplained source in Sartor Resartus; the 9th-century Arabic writer Al-Jahiz had already recorded the saying.

In Pliny's tale behind 'let the cobbler stick to his last', which Greek painter rebuked a shoemaker who faulted a leg?

Apelles hid behind his pictures to hear comments; the cobbler rightly faulted a sandal strap, then overreached, and English got the word 'ultracrepidarian'.

'Manners maketh man' is the motto of Winchester College and New College, Oxford, both founded by which medieval bishop?

William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester and twice Chancellor of England, chose the motto himself rather than inheriting it from his family.

Thomas More first used 'out of the frying pan into the fire' in 1532 while attacking which Bible translator?

William Tyndale was the adversary More said had 'conveyed himself out of the frying pan fair into the fire'; a 1490s fable of fish leaping from the pan lies behind it.

'A healthy mind in a healthy body' comes from a satire listing what a Roman should pray for, by which poet?

Juvenal's Satire X supplied 'mens sana in corpore sano', and the sportswear firm ASICS is an acronym of the variant 'anima sana in corpore sano'.

Sophocles' 'no one loves the messenger who brings bad news', the root of 'don't shoot the messenger', is in which play?

Antigone contains the line; Plutarch adds that Tigranes had the first messenger who announced Lucullus's approach beheaded 'for his pains'.