you know what they say about women.
I saw this come up in someone’s twitter feed today – Roger Ebert, maybe? I can’t remember. Anyway, there’s a site called Never Marry a Woman with Big Feet [hey!!], and it’s a collection of international proverbs about women. You really get a sense of a culture’s take on women by looking at their proverbs, I must say, for example:
She who offers a half-cooked meal is better than she who offers her buttocks.
— Rwanda [not quite sure I get this one, but I think they really like food?]
The thicker the veil, the less it’s worth lifting.
— Turkish [a universal truth in some ways, certainly not just about women, although it's not true at all about Truth]
A woman’s beauty makes fish sink and wild geese fall from the sky.
— Chinese [the Chinese are now my favorites, unless I've totally misunderstood the meaning]
Every woman is beautiful in the dark, from a distance, and under an umbrella.
— Japanese [hey! that's a jerk thing to say!]
A woman who knows Latin will never find a husband nor come to a good end.
— all over Europe [oh, you wacky Europeans]
I personally like proverbs that I’ve learned from women – especially old women – and more especially, from old Texas women like my grandmother, who taught me “Don’t worry about the blind mule, honey, just load up the wagon.” Or one from my grandfather Big Daddy, about some female relative: “She’d talk your right arm off and whisper in the hole.”
I love those colorful old proverbs. Personally, I try to work in the one about the blind mule at every opportunity. Do you have a favorite?
I definitely prefer your family proverbs over the international ones you quote. Particularly your grandfather’s – that one had me laughing out loud.
Proverbs don’t seem to be coming to me at the moment, though I can come up with a lot of quotes. One that I’ve always liked turns out to be from Benjamin Franklin – Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days. (Which leads me to “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” Is that a proverb?)
.-= On her own blog, Anne Campbell just said ..Mastering Lacework =-.
Yeah, Big Daddy was a real gem. He rarely said anything at all, but when he did it was always very dry and therefore very funny. Once, after my grandmother had been in a FOUL mood all day, he just said “Ma’s bitter.” It still makes me laugh. Actually, though, none of these were proverbs, which I realized after I wrote the post. Ah well.
Your Ben Franklin quote is great; my former mother-in-law cross stitched that line and hung it in the guest room. You always knew right where you stood with that woman.
Ce que femme veut Dieu le veut (French proverb of the late 19th century)
.-= On her own blog, Kty just said ..*10 shawls in 2010* : Mum’s La-Lavender shawl =-.
Go, French people of the late 19th century! I say amen and hallelujah to that fine proverb.
Your Texan proverbs are great! My father-in-law grew up on a farm in rural Ohio so he has quite a few of his own but I don’t know if they’re appropriate to write here!
On her own blog, Andrea just wrote a post titled..California Camisole
rural proverbs are fantastic – and it’s hard to make them up, if it’s not your own way of talking.