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.
The English winter — ending in July
To recommence in August.
Don Juan, Can. XIII, St. 42
2.
I have no spur,
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself,
And falls on the other.
Macbeth (Macbeth), Act I, Scene VII
3. It is seldom that the miserable can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.
Silas Marner, Ch. XII
4. One foul wind no more makes a winter, than one swallow makes a summer.
Martin Chuzzlewit, Ch. XLIII
5.
A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
Of him that makes it.
Love’s Labour Lost (Rosaline), Act V, Sc. II
6. He that thinks with more extent than another, will want words of larger meaning.
The Idler, No. 70