Folklore: modern proverb

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 12 Oct 20 - 09:47 AM

I'm surprised that no-one has yet offered "If it looks too good to be true, it is too good to be true".

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: leeneia
Date: 12 Oct 20 - 02:07 PM

Oh, I dunno, Richard. Great things sometimes happen.
============
I found a good new proverb on a video from Bob & Brad, the physical therapists:

   Broken crayons still color.

By the way, if you have joint pain, Bob & Brad have a lot of good advice.

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: Joe_F
Date: 12 Oct 20 - 09:44 PM

It is tasteless to recommend one's own taste, but scarcely honest to recommend any other.

Better pissed off than on.

Had enough? Drop dead.

Better a clown than a clone.

Calling someone stupid is a cheap substitute for saying something smart.

Happiness is the best preparation for misery, if misery must come.

First of all, don't make it worse.

An exact answer to the wrong question may be a rough answer to the right one.

If you don't like the fortune, don't eat the cookie.

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: GUEST,Allanwill
Date: 13 Oct 20 - 12:04 AM

Try that again!

Thanks, Mark - I can just picture Dave Allen sitting on his stool with his glass of booze, his cigarette and his missing finger uttering those profound words.

I feel vindicated!

Allan

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Oct 20 - 05:22 AM

The real genius was the man who invented the second telephone.

Illegitimes non carborundum (Don't let the b*ast*ards grind you down).

One man's fish is another man's poisson.

Give a man a bucket of coal and you keep him warm for the night. Set a man on fire and you keep him warm for the rest of his life.

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: GUEST,Nick Dow
Date: 13 Oct 20 - 04:33 PM

He who keeps his head when all around are losing theirs has thought of somebody to blame it on.

The four stages of becoming a professional Folk Singer..
1. Don't be stupid, stop wasting your time.
2. Well I suppose it might work, but it isn't worth doing.
3. I said it was a good idea all along!
4. I knew ****** before anybody had heard of them.

A corollary has been added to the well known Murphy's law, also known as Sod's Law. A fellow researcher called O'Toole has summed up his discoveries in one sentence.
Murphy was an optimist!

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: Joe_F
Date: 13 Oct 20 - 05:39 PM

Pessimism can offer only the empty consolation of being right.

The tragedy is not what we suffer, but what we miss.

Be inobviously tuitive.

Threats are expensive when they fail; promises are expensive when they succeed.

Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

A proof tells us where to concentrate our doubts.

We can learn a lot about ourselves by studying the lower animals, especially those of our own species.

Take it easy, but take it.

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 13 Oct 20 - 05:57 PM

The first law is: if anything can go wrong it will go wrong.

The second law is: The first law cannot be used to advantage.


Robin

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: GUEST,Nick Dow
Date: 13 Oct 20 - 07:26 PM

When you're up to your nose in it, keep your mouth shut!

Nothing can be fool proof, because fools are ingenious.

Never argue with a fool, some people might not know the difference.

If God had meant the Americans to vote he would have given them candidates. (Utah Phillips)

Absence of mind is a cerebral condition essential to survive exposure to Party Political Broadcasts, preaching, traffic wardens, jobsworths, and the BBC. (Nick Dow influenced by Ambrose Bierce)

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: Jack Campin
Date: 13 Oct 20 - 08:36 PM

Nine women can't make a baby in a month.

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 Oct 20 - 09:04 PM

Derek brimstone used to say...never ignore an omen

Never walk across the M1 with your eyes closed.

It a wise man who forbears from kicking a bulldog in the knackers, when he's got his hand in its mouth.

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 14 Oct 20 - 05:41 AM

Nick Dow quoted
> Nothing can be fool proof, because fools are ingenious.

Here's a variation on that which seems worth quoting, albeit that it is highly politically incorrect. It came from a late boss of mine, applying to the design of medical equipment. "You can make it foolproof. You can even make it bloody fool proof. But you can't make it nurse proof."

Behind that is the sad truth that nurses are often overworked and under-trained for the tasks that they are expected to perform. RTFM does presume that the M is even available.

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: GUEST,Nick Dow
Date: 14 Oct 20 - 10:11 AM

Say that again Doug?

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: leeneia
Date: 14 Oct 20 - 10:41 AM

Jack, I love your proverb "Nine women can't make a baby in a month."

It reminds me a legislators who think that if we just put enough pressure on teachers and kids, then neglected kids who have almost no vocabulary will become excellent readers.

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: Jack Campin
Date: 14 Oct 20 - 12:38 PM

That one is from the software engineering guru Frederick Brooks - he quotes it in his book "The Mythical Man-Month" (dunno if he invented it).

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: GUEST,Nick Dow
Date: 14 Oct 20 - 04:08 PM

After 34 years working as a radio presenter for the BBC I am aware of certain incontrovertible laws. This also works for other corporate sectors.

The first myth of management is that it exists.

Instructions to managers.

1. When in doubt mumble
2. Always write something down this indicates you have been working.
3. Always carry a clipboard and a serious expression.
4. If faced with a question you cannot answer-paraphrase the question back to the worker with a look of incredulous contempt.
5. It's never your fault.
6. Always keep the office door shut, this puts people on the defensive.
7. Admit to small faults to hide the bigger ones.
8. If you are clueless about the job in hand, simply say ' Great work Carry on!' with a satisfied smile.

You will climb the corporate ladder, which probably explains why I presented the same programme for three decades!

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: Mrrzy
Date: 14 Oct 20 - 04:24 PM

And "you're" dead.

Another Les Barker: always borrow from pessimists. They don't expect it back.

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: GUEST,Nick Dow
Date: 14 Oct 20 - 07:33 PM

That's the thing about death. It severely limits your future.

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: Donuel
Date: 15 Oct 20 - 06:46 PM

Its better to be a fruit than a vegetable.

Republican moral courage is more rare than a fossilized bible.

It is noble to be good, and it is nobler still to just teach others to be good -- and more fun too.

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Oct 20 - 06:59 PM

Is making up stuff just for the sake of posting "folklore?"

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: Joe_F
Date: 15 Oct 20 - 08:52 PM

If you will not while you may, you shall not when you will.

Investing is not the same as gambling, and downtown is not the same as uptown.

It is a great thing to die in your own bed, though it is better still to die in your boots.

Eager to please, and a nuisance. Easy to please, and a comfort.

Big prizes make many losers.

Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.

And always remember, the longer you live,
The sooner you bloody well die.

To be born is to fall down the chimney of a strange house.

The temptation in business, politics, and public health is to judge everything by one number.

Wealth adds to strength, but multiplies weakness.

To do good is virtuous, and to wish good to be done is amiable, but to wish to do good is as vain as it is vain.

Never being in love is like never being in debt.

If you never do anything stupid, you're not as smart as you think.

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 15 Oct 20 - 09:33 PM

James Thurber

"Unicorn in the Garden"


"You are a booby, and you belong in a booby-hatch. >

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: Pappy Fiddle
Date: 16 Oct 20 - 12:15 AM

Break the heart of complacency and smack the ass of adventure. < Jonny Ox

When you see a place that's really lush and green, there's usually a reason for it. < Woody Brison, after living in Oregon for a year

He who has money can eat sherbet in hell. < Lebanese proverb.

What the boss don't know, the boss won't mind < Anaïs Mitchell?

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: BobL
Date: 16 Oct 20 - 03:40 AM

Never...

... be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century -- Dame Edna Everage.
... believe everything you think.
... do card tricks for the group you play poker with.
... feed the cat anything that doesn't match the carpet.
... stand between the dog and the lamppost -- Les Barker.
... test the depth of the water with both feet.
... under any circumstances take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 16 Oct 20 - 03:55 AM

"It's not for me, it's for all of us" is said by the person receiving the honour, not by those looking on.

DC

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: Joe_F
Date: 16 Oct 20 - 06:17 PM

If you do the right thing under duress, you still get credit, but you don't have as much fun.

If it moves, fondle it, except porcupines, ball lightning, and policemen.

Money is especially valuable in that it is overvalued.

It is a sin to think evil of others, but not always a mistake.

Failure teaches a valuable lesson: that we are liable to fail again.

You have to die of something.

Reason will conflict with faith so long as respect for evidence conflicts with contempt for evidence.

Some difficulties present valuable opportunities, and the rest present valuable excuses.

Compromise is the business of politicians. Leadership is the business of martyrs.

Mens sana qui mal y pense.

The one who loses an auction is called the winner, and the one who wins is called the auctioneer.

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 17 Oct 20 - 04:28 AM

Big prizes make many losers

That's one that I am going to take away from here.

DC

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: GUEST,Dave Hunt
Date: 17 Oct 20 - 10:07 AM

If it moves and it shouldn't = Gaffa tape
If it should move and it doesn't = WD40

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: Mrrzy
Date: 17 Oct 20 - 05:03 PM

If you DO not when you may, you shall not when you will, is how I heard that one.

Don't count your boobies before they are harched is my total fave of those James Thurber ones.

Being told to get over it is not one of the stages of grief.

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Oct 20 - 05:38 PM

Hold your nose and vote the straight Democratic ticket. [This advice has been traced to the election of 1896. It has worn well.]

Quantity for the young, quality for the middle-aged, reliability for the old.

Dress for success: wear a white penis.

The most valuable losers are ahead most of the time.

A little of what you fancy does you good.

Malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.

When you have taken a wrong turn, a step backward is a step in the right direction.

Rules, tomatoes, entertainment: homegrown is best.

Of all the adornments of power, the most impressive is restraint.

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.

When you see an obituary and say "Was that old bastard still alive?", you know you have reached a certain age.

When you are trying to make an impression, the chances are that is the impression you will make.

The ability to enjoy oneself at a low level of competence is a precious resource for happiness.

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: leeneia
Date: 18 Oct 20 - 01:05 PM

"The ability to enjoy oneself at a low level of competence is a precious resource for happiness."

That reminds me of a quotation from Robert Schumann that I keep on my piano.

"Endeavor to play easy pieces well and with elegance; that is better than to play difficult pieces badly."

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: GUEST,paperback
Date: 18 Oct 20 - 02:17 PM

Annus horribilis

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: meself
Date: 18 Oct 20 - 03:15 PM

The house always wins.

The Peter Principle: in a bureaucracy, every employee rises to his level of incompetence.

No pain, no gain - and its more sensible corollary, No pain, no pain.

No gets out of here alive.

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: GUEST,Nick Dow
Date: 18 Oct 20 - 05:01 PM

THE FOOL
A member of a powerful and far reaching tribe, with overpowering influence in every area of human affairs.
It was he who invented nationalism and taught the nations war, it was he who invented class prejudice, the poll tax, newspapers, the legal system and car clampers.
As the dawn of civilisation first beheld he fooleth now! When the rest of us have retired to oblivion from old age and pestilence he will sit up and write ten volumes of his memoirs.
(Nick Dow with tongue firmly in cheek and once again heavily influenced by Ambrose Bierce)

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Oct 20 - 05:43 PM

If you know your customers' business better than they do, you are all in the wrong business.

Choice of attention is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer.

Everyone is entitled to the minimum of self-deception required for self-respect.

So be warned by my lot, which I know you will not.

Applause makes a good time to fart.

It is only the dead who have seen the end of war.

Whatever is not worth doing is worth doing well.

Money is like muck, no good unless it be spread.

Have you set up your environment so that you are punished for being careful?

It must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh!

The brain is supposed to stop what goes in the ears from coming out the mouth.

Less negativity, more nakedivity.

Don't call him a fool; ask yourself *whose* fool.

Each came prepared to forgive; neither came prepared to be forgiven.

The bottom line is in hell.

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Oct 20 - 05:54 PM

Anus horribilis: Her Maj's haemorrhoids in the year 1992.

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: GUEST,The Man from UNCOOL
Date: 18 Oct 20 - 08:48 PM

Isn't the tomato one from the OP by the late Miles Kington (of Instant Sunshine)?
There are those who like money round, so it goes round; the rest like it flat, so it piles up.
Happiness is a bouquet made from those flowers within reach.
Grant me faith, spare me religion, and God protect me from the Church. (This has that same knowingly ironic self-reference that "Don't say don't" has).
"If you know your customers' business better than they do… " you're prob. CEO of Facebook.
Eschew obfuscation.
Never put off 'til tomorrow what you can get someone else to do.
Nothing succeeds like a budgie without teeth.
Don't do anything _I_ wouldn't do (not that that leaves much… )
You can't be proud of who YOU are until you're proud of who everyone else is (Dick Gaughan's mum: perhaps that makes it not modern?)

10 Oct 20 05:39 IMHO, some of those NYTimes meaningless proverbs DO seem to have meaning:
"Not all firstborns become king" sounds like advice to parents not to assume their first baby will succeed without [their, or someone else's] input, or perhaps not to become too starstruck.
"The stars don't wait for the king's birthday to shine" speaks of some things being eternal, or of worldly (even supposedly respected worldly) things NOT being: a kind of reverse "sic transit gloria mundi" — itself a translation of "Just after the weekend, I threw up / barfed in Gloria's van"  :-)

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: GUEST,Nick Dow
Date: 19 Oct 20 - 02:32 AM

IF

(Virginia Graham)

If you can go unswerving as an arrow,
Favouring neither foreigner nor friend,

If though the gate be straight, the pathway narrow,
You can pursue it to the very end,

If you can wait for those who lag behind you,
If you can gather strangers to your breast,

If the sorbate traveller can find you
A home from home, an harbinger of rest.

If you are guided by some heavenly power,
Lit from within by a celestial light,

If you can keep your bearings hour by hour
However grey the day or dark the night,

If you can nurse the iron in your soul,
Finish the journey you have well begun,

Live on these lines till you have reached your goal,
You’ll be a tram, my son.

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: GUEST,guest
Date: 19 Oct 20 - 07:36 AM

I had a work colleague who always maintained that

"Many a true jest is spoken in words"

one of my bosses avered

"Hard work kills horses"

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: Mo the caller
Date: 19 Oct 20 - 08:18 AM

Guest quoted

"It must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh"

How modern does it have to be to qualify? Matthew 18:7 was written a while ago.

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: Mo the caller
Date: 19 Oct 20 - 08:20 AM

Reminds me of a party quiz /game where you are given a list of quotations and have to say whether they come from the Old Testament, new Testament or Shakespeare.

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: GUEST,Nick Dow
Date: 19 Oct 20 - 10:10 AM

or Ambrose Bierce. Check out the Devil's Dictionary if you haven't already.

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: The Man from UNCOOL
Date: 19 Oct 20 - 10:55 AM

e.g. "Consult" the sham of seeking opinions on a course already decided upon.
(I may be paraphrasing slightly, from AB's DD, cited above). This was compiled from about the 1880s thru the ?early 1900s, yet it sounds like it could have been coined in the 2000s.

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Oct 20 - 11:11 AM

'But thy eternal summer shall not fade'

I saw this line from Sonnet 18 used as the epigraph in a biography of Mozart (The Life And Death Of Mozart by Michael Levey). I've always nurtured a vague hope that someone will have found my personality to have been sufficiently sunny to put this on my headstone... ;-)

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: Joe_F
Date: 19 Oct 20 - 09:56 PM

You need two out of three: altitude, airspeed, and a brain.

Consoling the useless is some use.

Be careful what you do with your resentment.

If you can't pay it back, pay it forward.

You don't have to outrun the enemy as long as you can outrun your friends.

"Need" needs "in order to" in order to make sense.

Wanking is fine, but fucking you can actually meet people.

When scared of the dark, it may help to close your eyes.

As Balaam found out, even an ass may see something you don't.

Try to make the next to last mistake.

Here is truth by the bucketful:
There's sex and friendship; the rest is bull.

Put down love if you like, but don't knock heat.

Human nature is something we are supposed to rise above.

When the water reaches the upper decks, follow the rats.

Home is heaven and orgies are vile,
But I like an orgy, once in a while.

The graduations on a whiskey bottle: Jocose, Morose, Bellicose, Comatose.

Eat, drink, and be merry, and live to regret it.

You find out what's really wrong with an idea when it succeeds.

You can accomplish plenty if you don't care who gets the credit.

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: GUEST,The Man from UNCOOL
Date: 19 Oct 20 - 10:23 PM

I think the orgy one is Ogden Nash.
The "accomplish plenty" one (or a variant of it) is sometimes credited to Ronald Reagan [unlikely he coined it, but he displayed a block on his desk with it written on].
Winner of a BBC epithet competition some years ago [to my chagrin, I didn't log the name of the author]: "Casualties are the first truth of war."

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: Mo the caller
Date: 20 Oct 20 - 11:54 AM

We were often told "They that ask don't get" My friend added "they that don't ask don't want". Good excuse for not sharing anything.

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: Joe_F
Date: 20 Oct 20 - 06:00 PM

Mixima should be rendered manimal.

Quotation marks and car horns are warning devices that are used by the vulgar to express their feelings.

Six days shalt thou work and do all thou are able --
The seventh, the same, and clean out the stable.

How we got here is no indication of what to do next.

Beware of single-issue people and multiple-issue organizations.

Be grateful when what makes no sense makes no difference.

A potato without pepper is like a kiss without a mustache.

There is nothing wrong with devil theories in politics. Just look to the devil in the mirror.

If you insist on working like a badly programmed computer, you will have plenty of cheap competition.

One compass points north. Two compasses point at each other.

Treat a cold with the contempt it deserves.

Be sloppy enough that a surprise can happen, and careful enough that you can tell what it was.

Pretense must be more perfect than performance.

The greater the love, the more false to its object.

It is the duty of a patriot to protect his country from its government.

Ice belongs in bourbon, not underfoot.

Be 30% more considerate of others than they are of you, to allow for bias.

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: GUEST,paperback
Date: 21 Oct 20 - 01:56 AM

The squeaky mouse gets the cat

Subject: RE: Folklore: modern proverb
From: Jos
Date: 21 Oct 20 - 04:23 AM

"Be 30% more considerate of others than they are of you, to allow for bias."

That one reminds me of my mother's view of give and take as a recipe for a happy marriage - each of the couple should give fifty per cent more than they take. It worked for her.

(I'm not sure about the one about moustaches and kissing though. Was that one composed by someone who had a moustache, rather than the kissee?)