Notice such
specimens as these:--"Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take
care of themselves"; "When angry, count ten before you speak"; "Do the
duty nearest your hand, and the next will already have grown clearer";
"Remember that a thing begun is half done." Proverbs, then, are
results of observation, often affirmations of quite evident facts,
as, "Necessity is the mother of invention," or, "Who follows the
river will arrive at the sea." Maxims, in distinction, are results
of reflection. They are experience generalized into rules for the
guidance of action, as, "Think twice before you speak once," or,
"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will
not depart from it." Proverbs are statical; maxims are dynamic. Those
are wisdom embalmed; these wisdom vitalized. The former are literary
fodder; the latter are literary pemmican.
The commonest application of proverbs is as mental economics,
_substitutes for thought_. They are constantly employed by the
ordinary sort of persons as provisions to avoid spiritual exertion,
artifices to dispose of a matter with the smallest amount of
intellectual trouble, as when one ends a controversy with the adage,
"Least said, soonest mended.
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