Quotes about Proverbs

62 Sourced Quotes

Our heart oft times wakes when we sleep, and God can speak to that, either by words, by proverbs, by signs and similitudes, as well as if one was awake.

Out of monuments, names, words, proverbs, traditions, private records and evidences, fragments of stories, passages of books, and the like, we do save and recover somewhat from the deluge of time.

"Wal'r, my boy," replied the Captain, "in the Proverbs of Solomon you will find the following words, 'May we never want a friend in need, nor a bottle to give him!' When found, make a note of."

Charles Dickens

Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them.

Poets are like proverbs: you can always find one to contradict another.

The genius, wit, and spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs.

The great advantage of a proverb in argument is that it is supposed to be incontrovertible, as embodying the quintessential sagacity of our ancestors. But when once you have realized that proverbs go in pairs which say opposite things you can never again be downed by a proverb; you merely quote the opposite.

Bertrand Russell

Slavery is disheartening; but Nature is not so helpless but it can rid itself of every last wrong. But the spasms of nature are centuries and ages and will tax the faith of shortlived men. Slowly, slowly the Avenger comes, but comes surely. The proverbs of the nations affirm these delays, but affirm the arrival. They say, "God may consent, but not forever." The delay of the Divine Justice — this was the meaning and soul of the Greek Tragedy, — this was the soul of their religion.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Proverbs, words, and grammar inflections convey the public sense with more purity and precision, than the wisest individual.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

David in his psalms, Solomon in his songs and proverbs, the Prophets in the sublime outpourings of their awful inspiration, and Christ in his parables, those most beautiful and perfect of all allegories, luxuriate in signs and similes drawn from the fair trees of the East.

I get inspiration from things that have nothing to do with painting: caricature, items from newspapers, sights in the street, proverbs, nursery-rhymes, children's games and songs, nightmares, desires, terrors.... That question [why do you paint?] has been put to me before and my answer was, 'To give terror a face.' But it's more than that. I paint because I can't help it.

Proverbs accordingly are somewhat analogous to those medical Formulas which, being in frequent use, are kept ready-made-up in the chemists' shops, and which often save the framing of a distinct Prescription.

Richard Whately

Solomon's Proverbs, I think, have omitted to say, that as the sore palate findeth grit, so an uneasy consciousness heareth innuendos.

All minds quote. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. We quote not only books and proverbs, but arts, sciences, religion, customs, and laws; nay, we quote temples and houses, tables and chairs, by imitation.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Proverbs embody the current and practical philosophy of an age or nation.

William Fleming

In Proverbs we read: 'He that winneth souls is wise.' If any man, women, or child by a godly life and example can win one soul to God, his life will not have been a failure. He will have outshone all the mighty men of his day, because he will have set a stream in motion that will flow on and on forever and ever.

Dwight L. Moody

The hope of the world is that wisdom can arrest conflict between brothers. I believe that war is the deadly harvest of arrogant and unreasoning minds. And I find grounds for this belief in the wisdom literature of Proverbs. It says in effect this: Panic strikes like a storm and calamity comes like a whirlwind to those who hate knowledge and ignore their God.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

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.

Edwin Percy Whipple

The use of proverbs is characteristic of an unlettered people. They are invaluable treasures to dunces with good memories.

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.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

You never get to the end of Christ's words. There is something in them always behind. They pass into proverbs — they pass into laws — they pass into doctrines — they pass into consolations; but they never pass away, and, after all the use that is made of them, they are still not exhausted.

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley

A hair of the dog that bit us. Proverbs, I, 11 But in deed, A friend is never known till a man have need.

Don't lose patience. Wait on the Lord... He knows what is best for you. Obey His Instruction Book and 'trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding' (Proverbs 3:5). Don't trust your judgements or your emotions.

Proverbs should be sold in pairs, a single one being but a half truth.

William Mathews

The world is filled with the proverbs and acts and winkings of a base prudence, which is a devotion to matter, as if we possessedno other faculties than the palate, the nose, the touch, the eye and ear; a prudence which adores the Rule of Three, which never subscribes, which never gives, which seldom lends, and asks but one question of any project,--Will it bake bread?

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The best aphorisms are pointed expressions of the results of observation, experience, and reflection. They are portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and feeling. They furnish the largest amount of intellectual stimulus and nutriment in the smallest compass. About every weak point in human nature, or vicious spot in human life, there is deposited a crystallization of warning and protective proverbs.

William R. Alger

The wisdom of nations lies in their proverbs,
which are brief and pithy.

Proverbs about truth are well-loved in Russian. They give steady and sometimes striking expression to the not inconsiderable harsh national experience: ONE WORD OF TRUTH SHALL OUTWEIGH THE WHOLE WORLD.
And it is here, on an imaginary fantasy, a breach of the principle of the conservation of mass and energy, that I base both my own activity and my appeal to the writers of the whole world.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I would fain coin wisdom,—mould it, I mean, into maxims, proverbs, sentences, that can easily be retained and transmitted. Would that I could denounce and banish from the language of men—as base money—the words by which they cheat and are cheated!

A man of fashion never has recourse to proverbs, and vulgar aphorisms; uses neither favourite words nor hard words, but takes great care to speak very correctly and grammatically, and to pronounce properly; that is, according to the usage of the best companies.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield