What are proverbs?

Famous quotes containing the word proverbs:

    Who is so deaf or so blind as he
    That wilfully will neither hear nor see?
    16th century English proverb, collected in J. Heywood, Dialogue of Proverbs (1546)

    He that seeks trouble never misses.
    17th-Century English proverb, first collected in George Herbert, Outlandish Proverbs (1640)

    For proverbs are the pith, the proprieties, the proofs, the purities, the elegancies, as the commonest so the commendablest phrases of a language. To use them is a grace, to understand them a good.
    John Florio (c. 1553–1625)