Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Charles Clay Doyle is associate professor of English and linguistics, University of Georgia, and past president of the Western States Folklore Society. He lives in Athens, GA.

Wolfgang Mieder is professor of German and folklore, University of Vermont. He is the author or editor of numerous books on proverbs and the founding editor of Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship. He lives in Burlington, VT.

Fred R. Shapiro is associate librarian and lecturer in legal research at Yale Law School. He is author or editor of several previous books, including the The Yale Book of Quotations. He lives in New Haven, CT.

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THE DICTIONARY OF MODERN PROVERBS

Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Acknowledgments................................................viiIntroduction...................................................ixHow to Read the Entries........................................xiiiPROVERBS.......................................................1Appendix: Some No Longer "Modern" Proverbs.....................287Works Cited....................................................291

Chapter One

You can get straight (all) A's and still flunk life.

1980 Walker Percy, The Second Coming (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux) 93: "I didn't get a job. I didn't get married.... I didn't move on like I was supposed to. I made straight A's and flunked ordinary living." 1983 Robert Coles, "Alienated Youth and Humility for the Professions," in Preventing Adolescent Alienation, edited by L. Eugene Arnold (Lexington MA: D. C. Heath) 6: "The qualities of compassion, of self-respect, of disciplined behavior in a moral purpose— ... these capacities we must conclude do not necessarily come with education. As Walker Percy the American novelist put it, 'one can get all A's and flunk life.'" 1994 Peter Kreeft, Handbook of Christian Apologetics (Downers Grove IL: InterVarsity) 316: "Jesus said, 'What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?' No one in history ever asked a more practical question. In other words, don't get all A's but flunk life." 1998 W. Jay Wood, Epistemology (Downers Grove IL: InterVarsity) 67: "As Walker Percy writes, 'one can get straight A's in school and still flunk life.'" The attribution to Percy has been persistent.

Ability (Talent) can take you to the top, but character is what will keep you there.

1980 George W. Knight, Church Bulletin Bits, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids MI: Baker Book House) 44 (in a collection of sayings): "Ability may get you to the top, but only character will keep you there" (the proverb is ambiguously titled "Character's Holding Power"). DAP 3(4): "Ability will enable a man to get to the top, but character will keep him from falling." In recent times, the expression is often attributed to the basketball coach John Wooden. Wooden eventually did use the proverb in print: "I believe ability can get you ... to the top, but it takes character to keep you there. A big part of character is self-discipline...."; 1997, Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations (Lincolnwood IL: Contemporary) 99. Cf. "PUSH can get you there, but it takes character to stay there."

About is not close enough.

See "ALMOST is not good enough."

Absence is the mother of disillusion.

Champion (1938) 296 lists the saying as a Spanish proverb; it has been borrowed into English (and other languages). An interesting variant (perhaps arising from the nominal occurrence of disillusion as an uncommon substitute for disillusionment): 2007 Rodney Dale, Sayings Usual and Unusual (Ware UK: Wordsworth) 1 (in a list of sayings): "Absence is the mother of delusion." In light of the substitution of that psychological term delusion, we might compare this: 1913 Havelock Ellis, "Sexual Problems and Their Nervous and Mental Relations," in Modern Treatment of Nervous and Mental Diseases, edited by William Alanson White and Smith Ely Jelliffe (Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger) 1: 115: "... [I]t is true that absence is 'the mother of ideal beauty,' and that many a lover thus frustrated cherishes the belief that he or she thus missed happiness in life." DAP 3(4).

Absence makes the heart go wander.

1908 Washington Post 18 Oct.: "It is the separations that make the trouble. Absence makes the heart go wander. Sometimes the necessity of an engagement takes the wife away." The proverb originated as an anti-proverb based on "Absence makes the heart grow fonder." DAP 3(6); Litovkina and Mieder (2006) 82.

Abuse it and lose it.

1985 Los Angeles Times 10 May: "Factwino was born in 1981 as a waitress who had the human frustration of not being able to respond to arguments she knew were wrong.... The motto then was, 'If you abuse it, you lose it.'" 1986 Philadelphia Inquirer 2 Mar. (quoting from the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections Inmate Handbook): "This [telephone use] is a privilege for your use and benefit. Use it wisely and enjoy it or abuse it and lose it." The proverb originated as an anti-proverb based on "Use it or lose it." Doyle (2009).

Accomplishment is a journey, not a destination.

See "SUCCESS is a journey, not a destination."

Act first, think later (afterward).

1965 Dorothy Westby-Gibson, Social Perspectives on Education (New York: Wiley) 76: "Most Americans, on the other hand, tend to value 'getting things done' or 'doing something' about a problem. Indeed, sometimes 'act first, think later' has appeared to be our cultural adage." Baldwin (1965) 131 lists the saying as a Pennsylvania proverb. DAP 6(2). Perhaps it originated as a rebuttal of the old proverb "Think, then act" or "Act first, think afterward, repent forever"—sayings that advise against hasty, ill-considered action. Cf. the older "Shoot first and ask questions later."

Act like you've been there before.

1984 Spokesman-Review [Spokane WA] 2 Feb.: "On a player who spikes the ball after a touchdown [football referee Jim Tunney says]: 'I don't like them either. I always tell the player, act like you've been there before.'" 1986 New York Times 7 Dec.: "'But I never spiked the ball in college,' he [football player Stacy Robinson] said, because my coach, Dan Morton, used to tell us, 'Act like you've been there before.'" 1990 Ed Rushlow, Get a Better Job (Princeton NJ: Peterson's Guides) 103: "A National Football League coach was quoted as saying to his team, 'I really don't care what kind of dance you guys do in the end zone. Just be sure you act like you've been there before.' The same is true when you're on the telephone [seeking to obtain an interview with a prospective employer]: you have to act like you've been there before."

Get your act together.

1972 New York Times 12 Apr. (ad for women's clothing): "Get your act together at Plaza 2." 1974 Los Angeles Times 1 Jan. (ad): "We know how you want to dress. So get your act together with these famous gotogethers." RHDP 108; Lighter (1994–) 1: 7–8.

There are no second acts.

1941 The saying probably entered oral tradition as a proverb from F. Scott Fitzgerald's posthumously published The Last Tycoon (the author died in 1940): "There are no second acts in American lives." YBQ F. Scott Fitzgerald (46).

Action (Activity, Work) is worry's worst enemy (is the best antidote for worry).

1930 Washington Post 20 Oct.: "Hard work is the best antidote to worry, and like most busy people, you are not a worrier" (in a prognostication for persons born on 20 Oct.). 1942 W. M. E., review of The Retarded Child at Home by Katharine Ecob (n.d.), American Journal of Mental Deficiency 46: 280: "Outline as many possible definite things the parents can do to help the child from day to day. Constructive action is a good antidote to worry." DAP 6(7).

Activity is worry's worst enemy.

See...