When young, we were expected to learn proverbs at school. For example, "Accidents will happen".
Having a retentive memory, for this kind of thing at least, and admiring some of the poetry that makes them memorable, I always liked being sent to the back of the class to learn more.
But mostly these pearls of wisdom sound nice, but tell us nothing as a guide in life. So I thought I would try to compose some novel ones, which would be memorable in the same way as the saying, "Rome wasn't burnt in a day", but pass on useful information for our times. My first is
"Always put the soup in the saucepan".
This advice feel noteworthy and eloquent, and I know it is worth following, from recent personal experience.
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May I add
'watched toast never browns' and 'unattended toast burns'
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My wife uses "That x won't y itself" such as "The shopping won't buy itself" or "The document won't write itself".
II don't think she appreciates it when I sigh and sadly mutter "Oh well, that beer won't drink itself" or "Oh dear, that chocolate won't eat itself".
That's not what you mean though, is it? Do you mean things which sound as though they have a deeper, universal, meaning?Regarding the Rome example, I frequently respond to progress questions with "I'll burn that bridge when I get to it" which, the more you think about it, gets deeper and wiser yet remains conveniently uninformative.
Another of my wife's sayings - which gets used, for example, to convert a protracted and evasive discussion into actions - is "<adjective> words butter no parsnips".