Big Wisdom (Little Book): 1,001 Proverbs, Adages, and Precepts to Help You Live a Better Life

Who comes first, grinds first Dutch: Die eerst ter molen comt sal eerst malen. But while such texts from rural areas maintain the mill metaphor as part of traditional life, the standard German version is less explicit: In any case, examples of the longer mill proverb can be found in many Germanic and Romance languages today, but in English it has been lost and has become a very general and barely metaphorical rule of conduct. The Miller The miller was a stout churl, be it known, Hardy and big of brawn and big of bone; Which was well proved, for when he went on lam At wrestling, never failed he of the ram [prize].

His beard, as any sow or fox, was red, And broad it was as if it were a spade. A sword and buckler bore he by his side. His mouth was like a furnace door for size. He was a jester and could poetize, But mostly all of sin and ribaldries. He could steal corn and full thrice charge his fees; And yet he had a thumb of gold, begad. A white coat and blue hood he wore, this lad. A bagpipe he could blow well, be it known, And with that same he brought us out of town. Prologue, — This description reduces the miller to a Judas-like deceiver with his red beard, black nostrils, furnace-like mouth and chunky as well as broad body frame.

And one might well ask why the miller and his honorable profession deserve such a prejudicial characterization? For the most part it must have been a psy- chological reaction by customers who felt very much dependent on the miller. They needed him to get their grain ground, and they wanted the most meal and as quickly as possible from their grain. This placed them in the con- trolling hands of the miller. In fact, they were actually at his mercy, and they projected their fears and anxieties of being controlled and perhaps cheated upon this tradesman. Thus the proverb relates to problems of deception and mis- trust among members of two very basic professions.

A short poem by Nicholas Breton from the year shows all of this quite clearly, indicating one more time how the folk saw the role of the miller whose broad thumb influenced the weight scales to his own advantage and to the detriment of his customers: I would I were a Myller and could grind A hundred thousand bushels in an hour, And ere my Master and my Dame had dinde Be closely filching of a bag of flour. That is a wonderfully satirical verse about human greed at the expense of the miller profession. Whether the expectations were justified or not, many a farmer will have felt cheated by the miller when confronted by the small amount of ground flour from the large quantity of grain originally supplied.

Such stereotypical expressions exist about other professions as well, no- tably against lawyers, physicians, and priests. This is not necessarily directed negatively against the miller. The proverb simply states that one cannot pay attention or be aware of everything, using the metaphor of the mill and its miller to describe this fact through known facts.

This is exactly the way Shakespeare employs this metaphorical proverb. In the literary context of its appearance in Titus Andronicus, it has absolutely nothing to do with a mill or a miller. Instead it is Demetrius who uses the proverb to advise his brother Chiron, both sons of the Queen of the Goths Tamora, that he can woo Lavinia, daughter of the Roman general Titus Andronicus, even though there will be much upset about his love among the feuding Goths and Romans: Here the proverb functions simply as a bit of rationalization and positive per- suasion to encourage the brother to pursue his amorous desires.

Of course, there is also a bit of misogyny in those sentences preceding the proverb with its metaphorical message that Chiron should be able to win Lavinia in a clan- destine fashion. They are nothing but innocuous metaphorical phrases referring to someone having added too much water to a recipe, espe- cially one thickened with flour. The second expression with the same meaning simply alludes to the fact that millers using water-wheels for power had little need for more water.

And proverbs about the mill itself? These proverbs seem almost simplistic in their wisdom. In its metaphorical meaning the proverb alludes to the general truth that small causes will have small effects.

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As is the case with hundreds of proverbs, this proverb found its way into the vernacular languages. But the message is the same: Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds he all. Examples and Texts 51 Thus retribution may be delayed, but it is certain to overtake the wicked sin- ners. Here we have God or the ancient gods as the ultimate miller metaphorically grinding up his imperfect children, that is, punishing them for their sins.

This interpretation can also be seen in a passage in A. This can be seen quite well from two references out of letters by George Bernard Shaw. In he wrote: Here Sir Howard states: Truman used the phrase effectively to de- liver a Cold War slam at the Soviet Union: The Soviet Union has hitherto refused to cooperate with the free na- tions on real disarmament or control of arms and has used every con- ference or international discussion on disarmament merely to further her own design for conquest.

In the face of past failures and even realiz- ing the Russians still are seeking only further grist for their peace prop- aganda mills, while they arm for imperialistic purposes, we ought to put the burden of proof on the Russians by answering them with a concrete counter-proposal.

The metaphor is based on a biblical passage in which Jesus warns those who would dare to cor- rupt children: One is reminded of a modern interpretation of this phrase in D. What are the chances of survival of the proverbial language cited as exam- ples in this short survey of metaphorical wisdom relating to millers and mills? Some of them have already dropped out of general use, and their old and an- tiquated metaphors are in need of historical and cultural explanation in order to be understood at all.

But there are also those more common expressions that will definitely continue to be effective images for a modern life that is becom- ing ever more devoid of traditional mills. With such an inter- national dissemination of the proverb it should not be surprising that it also made its way to the distant United States, but let me mention here as an aside that it never really made it across the English Channel.

While he cites it only in English translation, he does attach the statement that it is a German proverb: Americans most likely learned the German proverb from immigrants who carried it with them to their new homeland. It should surprise no one that W. The apple does not fall far from the trunk. Edwin Fogel includes it again in German in his su- perb collection of Proverbs of the Pennsylvania Germans , but in the subsequent decades it was registered in English translation in regional collec- tions from North Carolina, New York, Illinois, and Washington. The Dictionary of American Proverbs that is based on this major collecting exercise from oral sources ascribes a general United States currency to it.

Checking through 18 German-English dictionaries dating from to , it becomes clear that English and American lexicographers have strug- gled for many years to find the appropriate equivalent to the German proverb, when at least by the s if not earlier they could have cited the loan translation that had become quite established in the United States at least. But lexicography appears to be a rather conservative endeavor, and it would behoove lexicographers to pay more attention to the impressive com- parative research that phraseologists and paremiologists have been conduct- ing for quite some time.

As it is, it took until for the translated proverb to appear in a foreign-language dictionary. Alan Dundes was able to make available to me an impressive 73 references of this proverb that were collected by his students at the University of Cali- fornia at Berkeley between and They also make clear that immigrants like the Pennsylvania Germans brought the proverb with them to America. In fact, 35 of the 73 references state that this is a German proverb. But there are 12 informants who consider the proverb of Yiddish origin, two informants each claim that it is Swedish or Russian, and one in- formant thinks it to be Irish.

This should not be surprising since, as has been shown, the proverb is well known throughout most of Europe. What follows are some quotations from these records to illustrate the importance and value of folklore archives for the historical and geographical study of proverbs. A reference that cites the proverb in the German language was collected by a student on January 26, , from Frieda Barkley, a retired German- American teacher from Benicia, California.

Barkley in , she was 82 years old. Surely she had heard and learned the proverb from her parents before the turn of the century, and this reference is an indication of how immigrants maintain their proverbs within the family setting where the native language continues to be spoken. Another older German immigrant placed the proverb into an alarming context in that, unfortunately, applies also to the present-day situation in the reunified Germany. She believes she learned it from her mother, Sarah Beber, between the ages of 10 or 15, circa This proverb is a Yiddish saying that was used by everyone.

Sarah Beber moved to the United States from Germany, and this proverb was one of those that she had learned when she had been little. Just as other German immigrants, they continued citing it in Yiddish or German in this country, eventually also translating it into English when communicating with people who knew only that language. There is no doubt that the Jewish pop- ulation in America did play its part in spreading this proverb. Even though the Folklore Archive at Berkeley contains no references by Dutch immigrants, it must be mentioned here that they also brought the proverb with them to the United States.

This is made abundantly clear in a letter to the editor of U. Though well into my 70s, I can still hear my elders speaking their native Dutch about the accomplishments and peccadilloes of neighbors and family: Ya, de appel valt niet ver van de boom—Yes, the apple falls not far from the tree. Modern scholars might belittle the positivistic folklore collections of earlier times, but they still need accessible texts, hopefully with contexts, to do seri- ous historical and geographical work. It behooves folklorists from time to time to publish new collections in order to show the modern use of proverbs and other verbal folklore genres.

The folklore archives contain not only texts in contexts, they often also include invaluable interpretive comments by both the informants and collectors. These are treasures that should be used, pub- lished, and interpreted, if folklore as a scholarly discipline wants to maintain its credibility. In the meantime, the modern computer offers diachronic research possi- bilities that can only be called the dream of any historically minded folklorist let alone paremiologist.

While the database goes back only to the end of the s, it is now constantly being expanded to become more and more inclusive. This short contextualized reference can then be printed out at once, but one can also decide to print out the entire wonder upon wonders! Obviously the miraculous world of computer searches of databases has its problems and snags at times, but none of them negate their positive value.

Furthermore, there is not a single Anglo-American proverb collection that would even come close to listing over a hundred references for any proverb. In fact, not even all such collections could together come up with that number of citations for a single proverb. Database searching for particular proverbs is truly revolu- tionizing paremiography as it has been known thus far. Mention has already been made that the proverb appears to exhibit some- what of a male association. This fact is certainly born out by the 45 contex- tualized references that clearly refer to a father and son relationship.

A typical use of the proverb in this meaning is the following excerpt from an article on Pennsylvania politics: The state is well into its second generation of moderate-to-leftish Re- publican leaders. Its gubernatorial candidate, Lt. This summer, the younger Scranton is showing that in Pennsylvania, the apple does not fall far from the tree. The proverb is rarely used to refer to the relationship of mother and son, probably because the physiognomic and physical similarities between them might not be as striking as between two males. If you want to know where Clinton first learned to use his head—not to mention where he got his indomitable, take-a-licking-and-keep-on-ticking spirit—look no fur- ther than Virginia Clinton Kelley.

No immediate reason for this discrepancy comes to mind, save that the proverb is in fact of a predominantly male orientation. The mother was a kurveh [whore] and so is the daughter. After all, children are usually a product of the traits and attitudes of both parents. But it must also be said that this proverb does not always refer to family relations either. For all his fame and fortune, Jordan is, at heart, just a Carolina kid called Mike.

In a word, yes. The proverb is changed to state that the apples fall far from the tree, a shrewd advertising trick or pun to indicate that new models of Apple computers are reaching ever expanding markets. There was a time when the doyen of proverb studies, Archer Taylor, stated in the old Proverbium journal that one must not leave any stone unturned when investigating the origin, history, and dissemination of a particular proverb see Taylor Taylor accomplished his numerous historical stud- ies of individual proverbs by searching through proverb collections and liter- ary works for references and variants.

But just imagine if he had had such folklore archives as the one at Berkeley at his disposal. The conclusion that all historical proverb dictionaries are sorely out of date is cer- tainly justified. Much updating work is needed to register older as well as newer references for at least the more important proverbs. The investigation of individual proverbs has indeed become revolutionized by the electronic age. Leaving no stone unturned in proverb searches now means even more consultation of printed texts, the careful scrutiny of folklore archives based on field research, and many fruitful hours scanning vast computerized databases.

As people look at these slurs, it is becoming ever more obvious that the native population suffered terribly in the name of ex- pansion and progress. Native Americans were deprived of their homeland, killed mercilessly or placed on reservations, where many continue their mar- ginalized existence to the present day.

An Indian History of the American West gives a more factual account. It is alarming that this invective against Native Americans that became cur- rent on the frontier around is still in use today, astonishingly enough both by the general population and the Native Americans themselves. Wit- ness for example the book title The Only Good Indian: Essays by Canadian In- dians that was chosen for a collection of short prose and poetic texts in which these native inhabitants from Canada express their frustration with their marginalized life in modern society.

How bad must their plight be if the editor, Waubageshig, decided to choose this invective against his own people as a title! The explanation is given in the introduction as follows: Police brutality, incompetent bureaucrats, legal incongruities, destruc- tive education systems, racial discrimination, ignorant politicians who are abetted by a country largely ignorant of its native population, are conditions which Indians face daily.

Yes, the only good Indian is still a dead one. Not dead physically, but dead spiritually, mentally, economi- cally and socially.

The Image of the Indian in American Vernacu- lar Culture for her voluminous and enlightening study. The result is a shocking stereotypical image that permeates all modes of expression, of which linguistic examples are only a small part. There can be no doubt about the sad fact that Native Americans were declared proverbially dead by the middle of the nineteenth century, es- pecially after the end of the American Civil War, when United States soldiers joined bigoted frontier settlers in a mercilessly carried out campaign to kill off the native population of this giant land.

Such willfully planned and ruthlessly executed destruction of the Native Americans needed its battle slogan, a ready-made catchphrase that could help the perpetrators to justify the inhuman treatment of their victims. Its poly-semanticity is grotesque to say the least. On the one hand, it is a proverbial slogan that justifies the actual mass slaughter of In- dians by the soldiers. Be it by physical or spiritual death, Native Americans were doomed victims of perpetrators who acted with manifest destiny on their side while so- called innocent bystanders did nothing to prevent the holocaust of the Na- tive Americans.

The time was ripe for this all-encompassing and all-telling proverb, but whence did it come? Although most lexicographers attribute it to a remark allegedly made by Gen- eral Philip Sheridan in , the terminus a quo for this slur can be found in The Congressional Globe: Examples and Texts 63 I will say that I like an Indian better dead than living. I have never in my life seen a good Indian and I have seen thousands except when I have seen a dead Indian. I believe in the policy that exterminates the Indians, drives them outside the boundaries of civilization, because you cannot civilize them.

Major William Shepherd described the general stereotype in his book Prairie Experiences as follows: It is his luck. From the Discovery of America to the Present Time Old Toch-a-way Turtle Dove , a chief of the Comanches, on being presented to Philip Sheridan, desired to impress the General in his favor, and striking himself a resounding blow on the breast, he man- aged to say: As Stephen Ambrose puts it so clearly in his account of the parallel lives of the two American warriors Crazy Horse and Custer It must be remembered that James Michael Cavanaugh from Montana had expressed a quite similar sen- tence already in in the United States House of Representatives, and no- body is claiming that he originated this frontier proverb.

If it was not General Philip Sheridan who coined the proverb in its present form, it was certainly also not an even more famous, or rather infamous, In- dian fighter who made the following incredible remarks during a speech in January of in New York: I suppose I should be ashamed to say that I take the Western view of the Indian. The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian. Reckless, revengeful, fiendishly cruel, they rob and murder, not the cowboys, who can take care of themselves, but the defenseless, lone settlers on the plains. Just as this proverb persists in oral communication, so it also permeates written sources from scholarly books to novels, from magazines to newspa- pers, and even on to cartoons.

This early reference also shows already what is to become a pattern in more modern uses of the proverb. It is interesting to see how this proverbial formula has been utilized as a slo- gan against the German enemy in particular during the two world wars, as indicated by the following references in various novels: Such vari- ants show, of course, also the regrettable internationalization of the slander- ous proverb and its underlying proverbial formula.

Besides the German enemy there were, of course, also the Japanese soldiers to contend with. It will surprise no one to learn that the proverb was adapted to fit this menace as well, as Richard Butler documents in his novel A Blood- Red Sun at Noon The only good Indian is a dead Indian. How is that in the former Yugoslavia? The only good Bosnian, Moslem, Christian, Croatian is. Its adaptability as a national stereotype is clearly without limit. The same is true for some of the following trivializations of the original proverbial invective.

The only good poacher is a dead poacher. The only good teacher is a dead teacher. The only good mouse is a dead mouse. The only good raccoon was a dead one. The only good cop pig is a dead cop pig. The only good snake was a dead snake. The only good priest [is a dead priest]. A good vacuum is a dead vacuum. As can be readily seen from these variants, they express to a large degree anx- ieties of people about such things as murders in detective novels or animals such as raccoons, snakes, and mice.

Anyone can catch a mouse; it is no trick at all; it is putting them off and keeping them down [by locating the mousehole s ] that is important. What you must do if you are at all principled about your work, is to conduct a war of nerves on the creatures. Sure, this is a bit of humor perhaps, especially if one continues to read an- other two pages of this seemingly futile exercise, but the careful reader might Cited from The Burlington Free Press August 16, , comic section. Behind the an- imalistic trivialization of the slanderous proverb hovers inescapably the historical truth of human extermination.

There a prejudiced white man from the southern United States makes the following comment about an African American servant named Jesse: Honest enough if you discount the saying in these parts that the only honest nigger is a dead nigger. The extermination of what the exterminators call inferior races is as old as history. But we white men, as we absurdly call ourselves in spite of the testimony of our looking glasses, regard all differently colored folk as inferior species.

In the meantime the proverb as a direct slur against the Native Americans continues to be in use, an ever ready invective to be cited to keep the painful stereotype alive. The only good kind is the dead kind. There is no end in sight as far as eradicating this proverb from common parlance. The New Yorker magazine in even published a dis- gusting cartoon showing two frontiersmen and a Native American around a campfire with one of them observing: Present company excepted, of course.

The cartoon in the New Yorker just mentioned is a small example of this type of sick humor, but even more upsetting is a short story by Mack Reynolds with the suspect title Good Indian In its mere nine pages the author describes three Indians coming to sign a treaty. The director of the De- partment of Indian Affairs gets them intoxicated and cheats them out of their land. Gleefully he tells his secretary the next morning: Far too long has this proverb given justification to the literal and spiritual killing of Native Americans.

In its poetic brevity is expressed the national shame of a people whose majority succumbed to the worldview that Native Americans had to give up their identity or be killed. The fact that this tiny piece of folk wisdom is still current today is a very sad comment on this soci- ety and its behavior towards Native Americans. As long as there remain prej- udices and stereotypes about this minority population, the proverb will not cease to exist. Wherever it will be uttered or written, it will expose blatant in- humanity towards the Native Americans.

This being the case, it is only natural to ask such questions as: When and why do good fences make good neighbors? In other words, the proverb con- tains within itself the tension between boundary and openness, between de- marcation and common space, between individuality and collectivity, and between many other conflicting attitudes that separate people from each other, be it as neighbors in a village or city or as nations on the international scene.

Much is at stake when it comes to erecting a fence or a wall, no matter whether the structure is meant for protection or separation from the other, to wit the Great Wall of China, the Berlin Wall, the walls that separate Ameri- cans from Mexicans or Israelis from Palestinians, and one individual neighbor from another.

Should it not be the goal of humankind to tear down fences and walls everywhere? How can anybody justify the erec- tion or maintenance of barriers between people and neighbors? The origin of the American proverb might well be found in a passage of a let- ter that the Reverend Ezekiel Rogers of a settlement at Rowley, Massachusetts, wrote to Governor John Winthrop on June 30, Reflecting on Thomas Jefferson as President, he states: Good fences restrain fencebreaking beasts, and preserve good neigh- borhoods. The passage also already mirrors the political interpretation of the proverb that has become quite prevalent in the modern mass media.

The proverb was most likely in oral use in the first half of the nineteenth century, for by it made it into the Transactions of the State Agricultural Society of Michigan: Bayles in the New York Times: The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there. I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

English proverbs

To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And some are loaves and some so nearly balls We have to use a spell to make them balance: Oh, just another kind of outdoor game, One on a side. It comes to little more: There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard. But here there are no cows. I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. The complex meaning of the ambiguous poem can be summarized as follows: It is generally agreed that the speaker of the poem is not Robert Frost, who as the poet intended noth- ing more or less than to display the confrontation of two neighbors over the maintenance of a wall that, to make things even more difficult, is not really needed any longer for any pragmatic reasons. But are things quite so simple with the meaning of the proverb? In other words, perhaps the old- fashioned neighbor really is not such a stubborn blockhead after all.

He does in fact understand the meaning of the proverb quite differently from the speaker. He sees the need of the fence to get along with his neighbor, that is, it is a positive and not a negative barrier or wall. The very fact that the message of the proverb is expressed indirectly through a metaphor makes its dual interpretation possible.

Perhaps Robert Frost had nothing else in mind when he wrote this poem but to show that proverbs are verbal devices of mischievous indirection, reflecting by their ambiguous na- ture the perplexities of life itself. The argument of the neighbors over the in validity of the proverb continues to the present day and will not cease to take place.

After years of bickerings Family one Put up a spite fence Against family two. The Maine village Looked so peaceful. Now if you drive through You see the split wood, Thin and shrill. Who made it, One side or the other? Bad neighbors make good fences. Naturally, there have been periods of friction, but generally the fence has worked well. Why the United States Provokes Canadians tells some of this story, for even though the two countries are as close in many sociopolitical aspects as any, they both want to retain their separate identities.

That is what makes the fence between them such a good one. Reproduced with permission of Punch Ltd. Toronto Star, Of course, there are also serious concerns at the U. Recent and Prospective U. The mass media is also filled with numerous articles on the strained relations, sig- naling that a new iron curtain seems to be falling between the two countries: Border Watch—Fence Mending Good fences make good neighbors. A good deal of the traffic in both directions is legal and beneficial to both sides.

As the journalist Aviva Cantor put it: If his words apply to any neighbors, it is to Israelis and Palestinians. The two nations are like a couple mired in distrust, fear, and hatred. But each lives in a dream world, be- cause neither is going to get all the property, nor will either succeed in driv- ing the other out. It is time, then, to separate. Five years later, the Israeli journalist Yosef Goell echoed these sentiments by once again using the proverb, albeit as a quotation from Frost: By the beginning of , Israeli politi- cians started to think of a real fence that would separate the Israelis from the Palestinians: Now, the best aim is to help them live apart.

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As quickly as possible. It would sepa- rate Palestinians from the Israeli military and checkpoints, and Israelis from Palestinian suicide bombers. In some cases, good fences make good neighbors or at least non-bleeding ones. Newhouse News Service, Separation is perhaps truly the most effective way at the moment to keep Is- raelis and Palestinians from violent confrontation.

And yes, communication across the fence could just build a bridge to a better time when the fence could come down again. As he re- ports on the history of fences in the United States, he makes the all too com- mon error of claiming that Robert Frost coined the proverb.

Nevertheless, he is aware of its ambiguity in the poem and as a proverb by itself: This ambivalence is doubtless why the saying be- came so popular—you can see both sides and both seem equally true. Or maybe not quite that. It depends on who is laying the fence, and where and why. Washington Post, But it is common knowledge, of course, that there are always two sides to each fence, to that barrier that both separates and connects, if effective com- munication and serious commitment to common goals like peace, for exam- ple, are present.

When people work together on not totally dispensable fences, they might just build bridges across them and learn to tolerate each other in a congenial humane way. In other words, it is argued that a picture can in fact be worth more than numerous book pages. This is doubtlessly the case also for someone who has difficulty reading or who perhaps cannot read at all. Rather it is based on an easily recognizable structure of one pic- ture having the value of a thousand words, a typically proverbial exaggeration to emphasize the discrepancy between visual and verbal communication.

Modern psychological research on perception has shown that the message of this proverb is only too true in light of such visual mass media as television, videos, photographs, advertisements, cartoons, comics, and so on. People communicate more and more through pictures—a fine example being the signs in international airports for the foreign travelers—and there is no doubt that imagery often precedes any verbal process. The actual structural pattern was definitely not invented by the person who so successfully formulated this new text.

It is doubtful that this rather uncommon text served as a direct basis for the new proverb since it never gained general currency. There the national advertising manager Fred R. Barnard of the Street Railways Advertising Co. Good advertising for a trade marked product is nothing more nor less than the delivery of favorable impressions [pictures] for it, and it does not make any difference whether they are delivered through news- papers, magazines or street car advertising.

From a modern point of view this advertisement is absolutely boring and the fact that a picture is missing makes matters even worse. But that is exactly the purpose of these two pages of text, for Barnard, the shrewd advertising exec- utive, argues innovatively and convincingly that successful advertising is in fact only possible through pictures. The picture of the boy, the cake, and the can of baking powder result in an effective visual advertising message: It reminded all mothers every day of a sure way to give a treat to their own children.

And hundreds of thousands got an extra thrill with their next cake making because of the happy expression of the boy on the car card. In addition Barnard also included a small illustration of six Chinese charac- ters with an English translation: One picture is worth ten thousand words. This change of mind alone already indicates that Barnard simply invented the statement for his manipulative marketing purposes. American readers most likely thought of the sayings of Confucius — B.

In November of the Lakeside Press advertising agency produced an advertisement that is based on the same reasoning that Barnard had used to create his slogan in the first place: A picture shows a pretty little girl helping her mother bak- ing a cake. Everyone who has ever planned or published a food advertisement knows that while the copy-writer is struggling futilely for flavorous and aromatic adjectives to sell the product, the color photographer accom- plishes the whole job with a single click of the shutter.

However, no other references have been located of this sentence. Hidden away in the copy of an advertise- ment it probably had no chance to catch on and become proverbial. In the DuMont Co. Fred Barnard would certainly have been pleased to see his advertising philosophy employed in this fashion. Here the pic- ture truly is worth a lot, for it must communicate the entire advertising message and the name of the whiskey. There are also a couple of comic strips that play upon the standard form of the proverb.

In a Peanuts comic strip Lucy is confronted with the task of writ- ing a two thousand—word report. I guess Shakespeare should have learned to draw. The Ford Motor Co. A variant of the proverb has also been used as a birthday card message above the picture of a furry cat holding a rose: And how unromantic is the comment by a business executive to another below a second cartoon: Because one van is worth 1, gallons. The proverbial ring of the altered proverb and the folkloric message of love must have sent plenty of consumers out on a purchasing spree, indicating once again how folklore and in particular proverbs are effective tools in modern advertising.

A final group of examples illustrates yet another way that advertisers have found to manipulate this proverbial slogan. But then follows an interesting line of argumentation by the marketing peo- ple of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, which has specialized in magazine advertisements for such publications as Fortune: Ultimately there is no substitute for print in the transmission of de- tailed information and complicated ideas. Offering the perfect words for any occasion, Big Wisdom Little Book makes a timeless gift for someone special or a cherished bedside reader for yourself.

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Featuring 1, thoughts, sayings, and nuggets of wisdom, this charming book gleans insight from ancient biblical proverbs as well as contemporary writings, providing direction for living each day, such as: Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can be bought. It's easier to eat crow while it's still warm. Read more Read less. Thomas Nelson Inc June 20, Language: Start reading Big Wisdom on your Kindle in under a minute.

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King James Version Bible Commentary. The Book of Revelation. The MacArthur Topical Bible. The Voice New Testament. The Century of the Holy Spirit. Quick Brainstorming Activities for Busy Managers. The Joy of Marriage God's Way. A Daybook of Prayer. How to Really Parent Your Teenager.

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God's Promises for Your Every Need. The Book of Daniel. Living Above Worry and Stress. A Charles Dickens Devotional. American Profile Hometown Cookbook. More Joy for the Journey.