Phraseology and Culture in English

part of the inheritance that have come down to this age from all the past 
generations of men. They have given us their institutions, their inventions, 
their books, and, by means of conversation, have transmitted their commen-
tary upon all the parts of life in these proverbs. They were originally doubt-
less the happy thoughts of sagacious men in very distant times and coun-
tries, in every employment and of every character. No single individual, 
with whatever penetration, could have attained by himself to that accurate 
knowledge of human life, which now floats through the conversation of all 
society, by means of these pithy sentences. We are all of us the wiser for 
them. They govern us in all our traffic, - in all our judgments of men, - in 
all our gravest actions. 
(October 18, 1829; Emerson Speaks, 62–63) 
Such comments reveal Emerson as a scholar with considerable interest in 
the deeper meanings of proverbs (see Norrick 1985). His own paremiolo-
gical progression is truly remarkable though, as indicated in yet another 
short comment in a lecture on “The Uses of Natural History”: 

---

Yankee wisdom: American proverbs and the worldview of New England
221
[...] every common proverb is only one of these facts in nature used as a picture 
or parable of a more extensive truth; as when we say, “A bird in the hand is 
worth two in the bush.” “A rolling stone gathers no moss.” “‘Tis hard to carry a 
full cup even.” “Whilst the grass grows the steed starves.” – In themselves 
these are insignificant facts but we repeat them because they are symbolical of 
moral truths. These are only trivial instances designed to show the principle. 
(November 4, 1833; Lectures I, 25) 
Two years later, Emerson returned to these thoughts in his first lecture on 
“Shakspear” [sic]. While repeating some of the proverbs, he adds some 
others and speaks of proverbs as “pictures” and of “the value of their ana-
logical import”. These comments foreshadow the modern theoretical inter-
pretation of proverbs as signs (see Grzybek 1987). One could indeed speak 
of Emerson as a precursor to paremiological semiotics: 
In like manner the memorable words of history and the proverbs of nations 
consist usually of a natural fact selected as a picture or parable of moral 
truth. Thus, “A rolling stone gathers no moss;” “A bird in the hand is worth 
two in the bush;” “A cripple in the right way will beat a racer in the 
wrong;” “‘Tis hard to carry a full cup even;” “Vinegar is the son of wine;” 
“The last ounce broke the camel’s back;” “Long lived trees make roots 
first;” and the like. In their primary sense these are trivial facts but we re-
peat them for the value of their analogical import. 
(December 10, 1835; Lectures I, 290) 
With the addition of the proverb Make hay whilst the sun shines, Emerson 
also included this paragraph in his significant chapter on “Language” in his 
book Nature (1836), explaining that “the world is emblematic. Parts of 
speech are metaphors because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the hu-
man mind” (1836; Collected Works I, 21–22). Clearly then Emerson looks 
at proverbs as emblematic or analogic signs for nature in general and hu-
manity in particular. 
It is interesting to note that Emerson in his lectures and essays likes to 
amass proverbs into mini-collections as examples. He does so again in his 
important lecture on “Ethics” (see February 16, 1837; Lectures II, 152–
153), repeating his many examples and comments more or less verbatim in 
his essay on “Compensation” four years later: 
Proverbs, like the sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of the in-
tuitions. That which the droning world, chained to appearances, will not al-
low the realist to say in his own words, it will suffer him to say in proverbs 
without contradiction. And this law of laws, which the pulpit, the senate 

---

222
Wolfgang Mieder 
and the college deny, is hourly preached in all markets and workshops by 
flights of proverbs, whose teaching is as true and as omnipresent as that of 
birds and flies. 
(1841; Collected Works II, 63) 
When Emerson argues that proverbs allow people to express matters meta-
phorically that they would not dare to state directly, he is in fact alluding to 
one of the major purposes of proverbs, i.e., communication through indirec-
tion.
And just as his precursor Benjamin Franklin, Emerson gets around to 
solid New England work ethics, as he would have them practiced in his 
native Massachusetts. In his lecture on “Trades and Professions”, for ex-
ample, he argues for solid work ethics and emphasizes his didactic com-
ments by the fitting proverb Idleness is the mother of all mischief:
[...] this universal labor makes the globe a workshop wherein every man, 
every woman drives his or her own trade in companies or apart, teaches the 
other law of human nature, virtue. It not only gives man knowledge, and 
power which is the fruit of knowledge, but it gives man virtue, and love 
which is the fruit of virtue. The sense of all men expressed in innumerable 
proverbs brands idleness as the mother of all mischief [...]. 
(February 2, 1837; Lectures II, 124) 
How much “Franklin’s proverbs” were on Emerson’s mind can also be seen 
in one of the paragraphs that Emerson added to his lecture on “Prudence” 
when he published it as a considerably lengthened essay with the same title 
in 1841. Referring even to “the [proverbial] wisdom of Poor Richard”, as 
Benjamin Franklin had recorded it in his almanacs, Emerson shows a pro-
gression from everyday prudent behavior to a prudence of a higher realm, 
concluding his comments with the appropriate Bible proverb As you sow, 
so shall you reap (Galatians 6:7): 
[...] The eye of prudence may never shut. Iron, if kept at the ironmonger’s, 
will rust; beer, if not brewed in the right state of the atmosphere, will sour; 
timber of ships will rot at sea, or if laid up high and dry, will strain, warp 
and dry-rot; money, if kept by us, yields no rent and is liable to loss; if in-
vested, is liable to depreciation of the particular kind of stock. Strike, says 
the smith, the iron is white; keep the rake, says the haymaker, as nigh the 
scythe as you can, and the cart as nigh the rake. [...] Let him [man] learn a 
prudence of a higher strain. Let him learn that every thing in nature, even 
motes and feathers, go by law and not by luck, and that what he sows he 
reaps. [...] Let him practice the minor virtues. 
(1841; Complete Works II, 234–235.) 

---

Yankee wisdom: American proverbs and the worldview of New England
223
Even though he merely alludes to the proverb Strike while the iron is hot,
readers will certainly have understood the proverbial message. And seeing 
an agricultural economy around them, they would also have recognized the 
somewhat expanded variant of the proverb Keep the rake near the scythe, 
and the cart near the rake.
Always the moralist, Emerson in his famous lecture on “Ethics” (1837) 
called for a detailed treatise “to unfold a part of philosophy very little trea-
ted in formal systems, and only treated in the proverbs of all nations, [...], 
which for want of a more exact title may stand under the title of Ethics” 
(February 16, 1837; Lectures II, 144). Besides morality, Emerson also had 
a healthy pragmatism in mind. But all of this wisdom he saw contained in 
the proverbs of the world in general and those of New England in par-
ticular. In the right context, proverbs represent not only bits of folk wisdom 
but they also express the worldview or mentality of those people using 
them to deal with life as such.