Proverbial Wisdom
Express the idea behind each of these proverbs using different words as much as you can.
Express the idea behind each of these proverbs using different words as much as you can.
On this page you will a find a selection of brief sayings, including short quotations from English literature as well as traditional proverbs. Choose a saying, and try to express the idea in different words as much as you can. In what circumstances might you use this quotation?
Note: Many of these proverbs and quotations are in archaic English, and neither grammar nor spelling has been modernised.
1.
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child.
King Lear (Lear), Act I, Scene IV
2. It’s ill livin’ in a hen-roost for them as doesn’t like fleas.
Adam Bede (Mrs Poyser)
3.
Were beauty under twenty locks kept fast,
Yet love breaks through, and picks them all at last.
Venus and Adonis, 96
4. There is nothing on earth so lowly, but duty giveth it importance; No station so degrading, but it is ennobled by obedience.
Proverbial Philosophy, of Subjection, 155
5.
It follows not, because
The hair is rough, the dog’s a savage one.
The Daughter (Norris), Act I, Scene I
6. Grief best is pleas’d with grief’s society.
Rape of Lucrece, St. 159