Folk Wisdom Quotes

He that lies with the dogs, riseth with fleas.

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

When the leaders speak of peace, the common folk know war is coming.

There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.

Pay heed to the tales of old wives. It may well be that they alone keep in memory what it was once needful for the wise to know.

Every day the bucket a-go a well, one day the bottom a-go drop out.

If it is stupid but it works, it isn't stupid. (a Shin'a'in saying)

ADAGE, n. Boned wisdom for weak teeth.

You know how people always talk about how vision is the key to entrepreneurship and perseverance and really seeing what other people don't see? We can actually redeem a fair amount of that folk wisdom.

The instinct of the people is right.

The witches, the wise women, and the healers were also always the counselors. It's a whole other tradition of knowledge and learning that has been suppressed because it had political implications

Proverbs were anterior to boots, and formed the wisdom of the vulgar, and in the earliest ages were the unwritten laws of morality.

The Italians say that a beautiful woman by her smiles draws tears from our purse.

Never look a gift lion in the mouth.

There is a southern proverb - fine words butter no parsnips.

His mother called such people ignorant and superstitious, but his father only shook his head slowly and puffed his pipe and said that sometimes old stories had a grain or two of truth in them and it was best not to take chances. It was why, he said, he crossed himself whenever a black cat crossed his path.

It's easy. You draw a red line on the ground, right? Then you wait for a chicken to come along. When he arrives, he puts his beak right on the line and he's hypnotized!

My mother is probably the wisest person I've ever known. She's not schooled, she's not well read. But she has a philosophy of life that makes well-read people seem like morons.

I got so tired of hearing those proverbs when I was a child. Now I use them all the time. Sometimes they are the best way to say what needs to be said. I teach them to my students. I have a collection of proverbs for class discussion and writing assignments.

In our village, folks say God crumbles up the old moon into stars.

And I remember most of what I know that is good and true and lasting has come not from scholars but from minstrels and gypsies.

Catch several hares and you won't catch one.

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

Praise not the day until evening has come, a woman until she is burnt, a sword until it is tried, a maiden until she is married, ice until it has been crossed, beer until it has been drunk.

I do not admire 'the people,' as such. No one really does. Their folk wisdom is usually false, their instincts predatory. Even their sense of survival - so highly developed in the individual - goes berserk in the mass. A crowd is a fool.