Never believe any old wives’ tales. Especially if the wives have piercing stares and their husbands died years ago under mysterious circumstances.
But do believe adages. Adages are extremely valuable little nuggets of information that have been around for ages. They’re like little advertisements for particular modes of thought. Thus the origin of the word:
advertisements for particular modes of thought that have been around for ages —> ad-ages
In general, they simplify lessons into a few concise phrases. Don’t know any adages? Well, check out these little gems:
- Practice what you preach. And if you preach about foosball a lot, you’ll eventually get really good at foosball.
- Absense makes the heart grow fonder. So never go to work ever; you’ll suddenly love your job!
- If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. And don’t let restraining orders get you down, friend; she’s just playing hard-to-get!
- If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. From this we cull the information that the Golden State Warriors must often “fail to plan.”
- When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Also, sacrifice a goat to the evil lemon god, Citra, who mysteriously gave you the aforementioned lemons.
- Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched. If you are cloning chickens rather than hatching them, count away!
- You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. From this we learn that all things become useless with age and should be discarded like used tissues. Grandpa: this means you!
Well, I think we’ve learned a lot. Haven’t we? Yes. One new adage I think we can add is: Adages are good. How true. Another one might be: Just because Seth‘s Thoughts with lists in them are funny, doesn’t mean Porter‘s will be. Truer still. Adages. Mmmm.