Adage Quotes & Sayings

There is a banking adage that if it's growing like a weed, it's a good chance that it's a weed. — Mark Zandi

Self-doubt was a luxury, as, perhaps, was the examined life. And yet the examined life, as the adage had it, was the only life worth living. — Alexander McCall Smith

One of the things that you learn, having been in this [President's] office for four years, is the old adage of Abraham Lincoln's. That with public opinion there's nothing you can't do and without public opinion there's very little you can get done. — Barack Obama

Something happens when your subconscious goes to work ... That's why 'Sleep on it' is an adage. — Jon Voight

An old bandit adage: A bell is a cup until it is struck. — Colin Meloy

Sartre is one example of someone who does just this. Every text is, after all, a human document and whatever Kierkegaard thought about God was clearly a matter of human thought that can, in principle, be retrieved and interpreted by other human beings. A phenomenological approach to religion must, it seems to me, adopt the old adage: nothing human is alien to me. — George Pattison

There's an adage in Silicon Valley that people who use online services are not the customers. We're the product. As — Dan Lyons

The Quantified Self movement argues that the self is nothing but mathematical patterns. These patterns are so complex that the human mind has no chance of understanding them. So if you wish to obey the old adage and know thyself, you should not waste your time on philosophy, meditation or psychoanalysis, but rather you should systematically collect biometric data and allow algorithms to analyse them for you and tell you who your are and what you should do. — Yuval Noah Harari

The old adage--humor is the best way to make the unbearable bearable--may be true. — Mary Ann Shaffer

Bethink thee of the adage, 'Call none blest, till peaceful death have crowned a life of weal. — Aeschylus

I'm very wary of fawning too much over heroes. There's an old adage that heroes are best kept at arm's length, and in a few instances in my life, that's been true. — W. Earl Brown

responsive. She now realized that the old adage 'he who wants friends must show himself friendly' was right. — Brenda Barrett

The old adage, 'If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is' isn't always correct. In fact, the suspicion, cynicism, and doubt that are inherent in this belief can and does keep people from taking advantage of excellent opportunities. — Richard Carlson

The children I describe here have horizontal conditions that are alien to their parents. They are deaf or dwarfs; they have Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, or multiple severe disabilities; they are prodigies; they are people conceived in rape or who commit crimes; they are transgender. The timeworn adage says that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, meaning that a child resembles his or her parents; these children are apples that have fallen elsewhere - some a couple of orchards away, some on the other side of the world. Yet myriad families learn to tolerate, accept, and finally celebrate children who are not what they originally had in mind. — Andrew Solomon

There's an old adage that says that money is the root of all evil. Bullshit. Lack of money is the root of all evil. — Gene Simmons

One of the first things successful people realize is the old adage, "If it is to be, it is up to me." That is, for you, the fact that your success and your course is up to you. This doesn't mean that you do it all alone. It simply means that you take responsibility for your life and your career. — Jim Rohn

Criticism is an alluring substitute for creation, because tearing
things down, unlike building them up, really is as easy as falling off a stump. It's blissfully simple to strike a savvy, sophisticated pose by attacking someone else's creations, but the old adage is right: Any fool can burn down a barn. Building one is something else again. — Martha Beck

I consider myself to be a true friend of the Israeli people. But I define friendship as someone who takes care of a friend, who just doesn't use or exploit a friend. And, you know, there's that old adage: 'Friends don't let friends drive drunk'. — Scott Ritter

After watching the State of the Union address the other night [1994], I'm reminded of the old adage that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Only in this case, it's not flattery, but grand larceny: the intellectual theft of ideas that you and I recognize as our own. Speech delivery counts for little on the world stage unless you have convictions, and, yes, the vision to see beyond the front row seats. — Ronald Reagan

I've always believed in the adage that the secret of eternal youth is arrested development. — Alice Roosevelt Longworth

There's an adage that is an apt description of the new dynamic at work between brands and consumers connected through social media: People support what they help to build. But now that many brands are launching community-driven cause marketing campaigns, the challenge becomes what to do next? — Simon Mainwaring

When I asked Richard Branson if he felt luck played a part in his success, he answered, "Yes, of course, we are all lucky. If you live in a free society, you are lucky. Luck surrounds us every day; we are constantly having lucky things happen to us, whether you recognize it or not. I have not been any more lucky or unlucky than anyone else. The difference is when luck came my way, I took advantage of it." Ah, spoken like a man knighted with wisdom. While we're on the topic, it's my belief that the old adage we often hear - "Luck is when opportunity meets preparation" - isn't enough. I believe there are two other critical components to "luck. — Darren Hardy

Seek out positive people who have achieved the success you want to create in your own life. Remember the adage: Never ask advice of someone with whom you wouldn't want to trade places. — Darren Hardy

There's the old saying that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. There are few better places to apply that adage than the drug war. It's time to end it. It's time to restore peace and harmony to Latin America and the United States. It's time to end the failed war on drugs. It's time to legalize drugs. — Jacob G. Hornberger

I followed the adage that if you really want to learn about someone, you should just shut up and listen. — James Patterson

Forget the adage buy low and sell high. — William O'Neil

There's an old adage," he said, "translated from the ancient Coptic, that contains all the wisdom of the ages
"Life is life and fun is fun, but it's all so quiet when the goldfish die. — Beryl Markham

Mum repeated the old adage that money can't buy you everything ... before adding that she prefers using credit cards instead. — Kirkland Ciccone

There's an old adage that for every second too fast per mile in the first half of the race, you'll run at least 2 seconds slower at the end. — Jeff Galloway

It's an old adage that the way to be safe is never to be secure ... Each one of us requires the spur of insecurity to force us to do our best. — Harold W. Dodds

It is an old adage that honesty is the best policy-this applies to public as well as private life-to States as well as individuals. — George Washington

The old adage was true; the surest proof of the Faith is that it has survived for two thousand years....in spite of the men that run it. — Val Bianco

The old adage of forgive and forget became a trudge through quicksand on a beach as high tide crashed onto the shore. — I.E. Castellano

Dictators during the entire history of this planet have used similar techniques. By not letting the people of their country know what conditions existed outside their boundaries, they could get the people to fight to stay in those conditions. It was the old adage: Convince a slave that he's free , and he will fight to maintain his slavery . — Samuel R. Delany

Intelligent transportation technology is key to better parking management. The adage that "You can't manage what you can't measure" fits parking perfectly. — Donald Shoup

I believe that the day one stops being spiritual, one ends up being religious. I live by the adage that the only certainty in life is death. We should, therefore, learn to live for the day and be content. — Ashwin Sanghi

That break comes for all of us, at different times and in different ways. The nourishment of food, the bonds of friendship, the occasions for celebration, and the delights of legitimate pleasure end in a matter of a moment for each life and each relationship. It is to this vulnerability of living that Jesus points His finger. The poet puts it in these words: Our life contains a thousand springs and dies if one be gone; Strange that a harp of a thousand strings can stay in tune so long. There is an old adage that says you can give a hungry man a fish, or better still, you can teach him how to fish. Jesus would add that you can teach a person how to fish, but the most successful fisherman has hungers fish will not satisfy. G — Ravi Zacharias

A lesser man might have begrudged
him that, but remembering the old adage, "The finder's goods shall
he retain / Nor mind the loser's dreadful pain," I rejoiced, rather, in his good
fortune. — Vinnie Tesla

Don't put down too many roots in terms of a domicile. I have lived in four countries and I think my life as a writer and our family's life have been enriched by this. I think a writer has to experience new environments. There is that adage: No man can really succeed if he doesn't move away from where he was born. I believe it is particularly true for the writer. — Arthur Hailey

We don't need less kids, just more middle managers ... — Ryan Fitzpatrick

One of those adversaries was Kevin Maxwell, the privileged son of a hard-charging UK media mogul. Anyone who had taken on Maxwell and his well-connected father, Robert, found that the Maxwell family frequently proved the old adage about starting a war of words with someone who buys ink by the barrel. — Dan Ackerman

The old adage applied: if God were in the details, Colonel Washington would have been there to greet him upon arrival. — Joseph J. Ellis

It is very difficult to apply the old Indian adage 'Do not judge another until you have walked a mile in his moccasins,' unless you get out of your own moccasins first. — Thomas Crum

The old adage that people only want what they can't have or what they can't tame - is totally primitive. A being of higher origins will know instinctively that life on earth is a series of chances, moments and concepts. That's really all that you have. So when you find one of these things and it makes you burn, or it makes you feel peace inside, or it makes you look forwards and backwards and here all at the same time - that's when you know to hold onto it. And you hold onto it with every fiber of your being. Because it's in the holding on of these chances and moments and concepts that life is lived. Every other kind of living is only in vitro. I don't care what psychologists say today about how the human mind works. Because one day they will reach this pinnacle and they will see what I see and they will look upon the old ways as primitive. As long and gone. We do not wish to have what we can't have. We wish to burn in whatever flame we have stepped into. — C. JoyBell C.

Authoritarian, paralyzing, circular, occasionally elliptical stock phrases, also jocularly referred to as nuggets of wisdom, are a malignant plague, one of the very worst ever to ravage the earth. — Jose Saramago

the Portuguese adage holds true: God writes straight on crooked lines. — James Martin

Suicide is a behavioral contagion. It's old adage "If all your friends jumped off a bridge, then would you, too?" Apparently, the answer is yes. — Suzanne Young

Time Management Tips: One can make a radar-like sweep of the horizon to identify time and task challenges while these are still manageable and while we still have a choice. The organizational adage, "the more parts, the more trouble," also applies to words. Multiplying words may actually multiply the probability of being misunderstood; economies in expression (without being taciturn or aloof) not only save time, but usually are more honest and more clear. — Neal A. Maxwell

Keeping in mind the old mountain adage that the longer you take to set up your bivy site, the shorter the bivy you have to endure, we ended up taking two hours to dig the snow cave. — Erhard Loretan

There's an old adage about everything looking better in the morning light. I'm guessing that whoever thought of that had never been punched in the face. — Tammy Blackwell

The old Wall Street adage "never invest in anything that eats or needs repairs" may apply to racehorses, but it's malarkey when it comes to houses. — Peter Lynch

There is a homely old adage which runs: "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far." If the American nation will speak softly, and yet build and keep at a pitch of the highest training a thoroughly efficient navy, the Monroe Doctrine will go far. — Theodore Roosevelt

That experience is the parent of wisdom is an adage the truth of which is recognized by the wisest as well as the simplest of mankind. — Alexander Hamilton

As the old programming adage goes: you had a problem and tried to solve it using regular expressions. — Jeremy Walker

Fake Math owes its existence to a number of things and people who have inspired and assisted this book on its way into the world. — Ryan Fitzpatrick

Potatoes have much more staying power than caviar. — Mark Helprin

Old Korean adage, "Even jade has flaws." Or, in other words: Nothing in life is ever perfect. — Alan Brennert

The adage that you're either gay or straight or you're lying, well, that's not true. Bisexuality does exist. — Clive Davis

That adage about genius being 5 percent inspiration and 95 perspiration - it's true. — Yanni

Growing up, I was always creatively inclined, and when YouTube came about, it was like getting the perfect platform to showcase what I wanted. Personally, I was going through a dark phase in my life, and I decided to make videos and basically go by the adage, 'If you want to cheer up yourself, go cheer up someone else.' — Lilly Singh

Death is eventual, a nature's call, and it happens everyday. Adage, true love, isn't, and it needs human strength to live with its enchanting, yet sorrowful consequences. It deserves to be appreciated, for it's not easy, and needs human will, strength, and heart. It doesn't matter how many people die in the world, as long as there are the few who know how to love and live. The power of love, however little, is enough to balance all the death around us. — Anonymous

A heart consumed with bitterness will turn to stone.
An old Lightkeepers adage, spoken by Boaz to Luka. — Rona V Flynn

The old adage "If you can't beat them, join them", to me is just a way of saying that you're weak. My motto is : "If you can't beat them, then you aren't fighting dirty enough". — Quinn Loftis

If I had only known kittens can climb drapes, perch on top of a traverse rod, and then screech like some femme fatale in a low budget horror flick to be rescued. That a kitten sounds like a herd of buffalo running on hardwood floors in the middle of the night. If I had only known a kitten's claws can sink through a sheet into your balls while you're jerking off. An old adage says, "Live and learn," and I amassed an encyclopedic amount out cat wisdom in less than twenty-four hours. — K.C. Kendricks

You know the old adage: give a woman a bag and she'll fill it for a day. Teach a woman to pack and she'll fill every damn bag she owns (or something of that ilk). — Annmarie O'Connor

I hope telling stories though 'Making a Difference' - as in my academic work and nonprofit work - will help me to live my grandmother's adage of 'Life is not about what happens to you, but about what you do with what happens to you.' — Chelsea Clinton

An adage worth repeating is also halfway to being irrelevant. You end up with something that is easy to say but not connected to behavior. — Ed Catmull

I really subscribe to that old adage that you should never let the audience get ahead of you for a second. So if the film's abrasive and wrongfoots people then, y'know, that's great. But I hope it involves an audience. — Paul Thomas Anderson

But even this gives rise to another central tenet, attendant to the Comedy Is Good myth: Comedy Is Hard. Certainly well-rendered comedy is hard. All things done well require practice and work. But for the most funny people, being funny is as inevitable as being double-jointed; it is a worldview formed long before words. One is born funny. The adage, as is, is incomplete. It should be Comedy is hard ... if you're not funny. Pirouettes are almost impossible ... without legs. Jokes can be honed, made better, tighter, and cleaner, and people can even be made funnier. But you can't really make someone funny who isn't. — David Rakoff

You can't change the world, but you can change yourself. That adage suits consumer capitalism perfectly, since the illusion of changing ourselves is a successfully maintained through shopping. — Madeleine Bunting

The old newspaper adage, 'If it bleeds, it leads,' is as true today as it was a century ago. — Peter Diamandis

Told me if I did not smell of the fire then I smelled of the frying pan. — Hilary Mantel

As the old Ranger adage went If a person doesn't expect to see someone, odds are he won't. — John Flanagan

As the old military adage goes, "If you're in a fair fight, you're doing it wrong. — Gary J. Byrne

I never stopped being attracted to women. Bisexuality is misunderstood; the adage is that you're either straight or gay or lying, but that's not my experience. To call me anything other than bisexual would be inaccurate. — Clive Davis

I am a believer in the adage - performance leads to recognition, recognition leads to respect and respect leads to power. — N. R. Narayana Murthy

When we pillow our heads at night, we need to have things that give us peace. Many such things are available, but one of the best is the simple peace of knowing that we've done things that day that were not easy for us to do. If we can see ourselves as people who are learning little by little to master the hard parts of life, we will live with a greater confidence and be able to serve those around us more helpfully. The ancient adage is true which tells us, A ship in the harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. — Gary Henry

There is a celebrated aphorism insisting that the best way to live is to 'work like you don't need the money, dance like nobody is watching, and love like you've never been hurt.' ... After years of hearing and reading these lines I have decided to tell the truth: the original version is wrong. There is a grave error in the wording of this adage. The correct version should go as follows:
Love like you don't need the money,
Work like nobody is watching,
Dance like you've never been hurt.
See? Doesn't that make more sense? — Gina Barreca

Keep at it! Remember marketing is building a relationship! If you use marketing for a year and stop, you cut off your relationship with the larger community. Then you will have to re-start the relationship all over again. The old adage "it takes six to stick" is proven true over and over again. I realized this in year three of our church plant. I think of the hundreds of people that came to our services that had no connection with me or our people because we were willing to build a sustained relationship with them through marketing. — Gary Rohrmayer

The juvenile adage Never kiss and tell had a sound moral instinct behind it. — Alexander McCall Smith

Hope strengthens. Fear kills[ ... ] That simple adage is master of every situation, every choice. Each morning we wake up, we get to choose between hope and fear and apply one of those emotions to everything we do. Do we greet things that come our way with joy? Or suspicion? — Karen Marie Moning

No more quickly can a person rob you of your joy and peace than when that individual succeeds at making you feel like you're less than worthy of God as compared to his/her own self. The old adage "You're on your way to hell, and I'm on my way to heaven" spoken or implied to another, is the most predominantly effective way to make someone feel better about himself; and he doesn't even have to prove he's better in this life on earth because now he can just say "Wait 'til I'm looking down at you while you're in hell!" But don't be robbed of your joy and peace, individuals or groups of people like that don't know where God is; He is a whisper-distance away from you, is all. — C. JoyBell C.

It doesn't occur to me at this moment to say more; another time, perhaps tomorrow, I may have more to say, but always the same thing and about the same, for only gypsies, robber gangs and swindlers follow the adage that where a person has once been he is never to go again. — Soren Kierkegaard

Forget the adage Win/Win and make a commitment to Learn/Learn. Win/Win is good, but implies an end. Once you win, then what? Learn/Learn creates a paradigm of ongoing value. This creates a Learn/Learn situation. I learn about you and you learn about me. And we learn from each other. — Ted Rubin

There's a great adage that says we sing because what we have to express can't be spoken, just using words. — Jeremy Jordan

The old adage about giving a man a fish versus teaching him how to fish has been updated by a reader: Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries! Moreover, some politician who wants his vote will declare all these things to be among his 'basic rights.' — Thomas Sowell

The old adage that the sins of the father fall upon the children has no better example to prove its truth than the example of the bastard. He is the victim; he suffers the penalty of a sin committed before he was born. In a village where every cupboard skeleton is the common knowledge of all, where every tongue hat has a weakness for wagging, has plenty of material to wag about, the existence of an illicit sexual union is not made a pleasant one. — Catherine Bailey

"Our prosperity, our friends, our bondage and even our destruction are all in the end rooted in our tongue," says a famous adage. — Krishnananda Saraswati

I believe in that old adage that 'as goes California, so goes the country.' — Kamala Harris

Unless the old adage must be verified, That beggars mounted, run their horse to death. — William Shakespeare

I would advise the curious reader to keep in mind the old adage "truth is stranger than fiction." Expect the most outlandish, fantastic and unbelievable elements of this story to be true, and the more low-key elements to be fudged. — Dan Grajek

There is an old adage that the quickest way to drop your tax take is to increase taxes. If capital gains tax is going to be 50 percent, my contingent capital gains tax is going to be 250 million pounds. — Peter Hargreaves

Don't be so sily, Philippa," the marchioness said, "Lord Castleton is an earl. Beggars cannot be choosers." Penelope gritted her teeth at the adage, her mother's favorite when discussing her unmarried daughters' prospects. Pippa turned her blue gaze on her mother. "I was not aware that I was begging. — Sarah MacLean

For the longest time I ignored or dismissed the adage that time flies as we get older because I didn't feel old enough for the "as we get older" clause to apply. Lately, though, I've started to think that I am, and that it does. Time isn't speeding up; it's pace is cruelly steady, a fact of which I am ever more painfully aware. — Alan Burdick

Long ago I added to the true old adage of "What is everybody's business is nobody's business," another clause which, I think, morethan any other principle has served to influence my actions in life. That is, What is nobody's business is my business. — Clara Barton

Says a fine Greek adage, "is the gift of nature; but beautiful living is the gift of wisdom.") — Will Durant

If you must be in a hurry, then let it be according to the old adage, and hasten slowly. — Vincent De Paul

I believe that one of the most damning things about our culture is the adage to never talk religion and politics. Because we don't model this discourse at the dinner table and at Thanksgiving, we don't know how to do it well and we're not teaching our children about the world and about how to discuss it. — Julianna Baggott

My grandmother, who passed away at the beginning of November, had a core adage in her life that 'life is not about what happens to you but about what you do with what happens to you.' She recently had been cajoling me and challenging me to do more with my life. To lead more of a purposefully public life. — Chelsea Clinton

I figured he was adhering to the adage that if you don't have anything nice to say, don't make fun of the person paying the mortgage. — Josh Kilmer-Purcell