Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of the ages through which they have passed

Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they passed.

Proverbs bear age, and he who would do well may view himself in them as in a looking glass

Patch grief with proverbs

No man ought to look a given horse in the mouth. The Proverbs of John Heywood (1546)

A bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, he told her, to which she retorted that a proverb was the last refuge of the mentally destitute.