Proverbial Wisdom

Express the idea behind each of these proverbs using different words as much as you can.

Introduction

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. Learning by study must be won,
’Twas ne’er entailed from son to son.

John Gay (1685-1732)

Fable XI, Pt II

2. Life is not so short but that there is always time for courtesy.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Social Aims

3. There smiles no Paradise on earth so fair
But guilt will raise avenging phantoms there.

Felicia Dorothea Hemans (1793-1835)

The Abencerrage, Can. 1

4. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

In Conversation with Sir Joshua Reynolds

5. Great men are seldom over scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire.

Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

Pickwick, Ch. II

6. There is no error to be named, which has not had its professors; and a man shall never want crooked paths to walk in, if he thinks that he is in the right way, wherever he has the footsteps of others to follow.

John Locke (1632-1704)

Essay on the Hitman Understanding, Bk IV, Chap. XX,
Sec. 17

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