Classic Truths in Our Everyday Speech

While researching a thorny philosophical conundrum, I had cause to
investigate the writings of prominent pre-Protestant Reformation thinkers.
One was [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus"]Erasmus[/ame] of Rotterdam (1466-1536), a classic Greek and Roman
researcher, deep thinker, and prolific writer.

He collected and published classic proverbs during the Renaissance. Here is a
partial list of ancient ideas that are still used today, most likely without any
understanding that their underlying truth is more than 2000 years old:
(I'd wager that you too have used one recently.)

Enjoy!

• Make haste slowly
• One step at a time
• To be in the same boat
• To lead one by the nose
• A rare bird
• Even a child can see it
• To have one foot in Charon's boat (To have one foot in the grave)
• To walk on tiptoe
• One to one
• Out of tune
• A point in time
• I gave as bad as I got (I gave as good as I got)
• To call a spade a spade
• Hatched from the same egg
• Up to both ears (Up to his eyeballs)
• As though in a mirror
• Think before you start
• What's done cannot be undone
• Many parasangs ahead (Miles ahead)
• We cannot all do everything
• Many hands make light work
• A living corpse
• Where there's life, there's hope
• To cut to the quick
• Time reveals all things
• Golden handcuffs
• Crocodile tears
• To show the middle finger
• You have touched the issue with a needle-point (To have nailed it)
• To walk the tightrope
• Time tempers grief (Time heals all wounds)
• With a fair wind
• To dangle the bait
• To swallow the hook
• The bowels of the earth
• From heaven to earth
• The dog is worthy of his dinner
• To weigh anchor
• To grind one's teeth
• Nowhere near the mark
• Complete the circle
• In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king
• A cough for a fart
• No sooner said than done
• Neither with bad things nor without them (Women: can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em)
• Between a stone and a shrine (Between a rock and a hard place)
• Like teaching an old man a new language (Can't teach an old dog new tricks)
• A necessary evil
• There's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip
• To squeeze water out of a stone
• To leave no stone unturned
• Let the cobbler stick to his last (Stick to your knitting)
• God helps those who help themselves
• The grass is greener over the fence
• The cart before the horse
• Dog in the manger
• One swallow doesn't make a summer
• His heart was in his boots
• To sleep on it
• To break the ice
• Ship-shape
• To die of laughing
• To have an iron in the fire
• To look a gift horse in the mouth
• Neither fish nor flesh
• Like father, like son
• Not worth a snap of the fingers
• He blows his own trumpet
• To show one's heels

The work reflects a typical Renaissance attitude toward classical texts: to
wit, that they were fit for appropriation and amplification, as expressions of a
timeless wisdom first uncovered by the classical authors. It is, as well, an
expression of the new Humanism. The Adagia could only have been possible in
the new world of European education, in which careful attention to a broader
range of classical texts produced a much fuller picture of the literature of
antiquity than had been possible, or desired, in the medieval period. In a period
in which sententiæ were often marked by special fonts and footnotes in printed
texts, and in which the ability to use classical wisdom to bolster modern
arguments was a critical part of scholarly and even political discourse, it is not
surprising that Erasmus' Adagia was among the most popular volumes of the
century.
[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adagia]Adagia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

More complete examples/discussion:
Proverbs, chiefly taken from the Adagia of Erasmus