Citations:proverb


 * 1678 — John Bunyan. The Pilgrim's Progress.
 * That proverb, 'A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush', is of more authority with them than are all the Divine testimonies of the good of the world to come.
 * Thou hast done in this, according to the proverb, "Changed a bad for a worse"; but it is ordinary for those that have professed themselves his servants, after a while to give him the slip, and return again to me.
 * Oh, they say, hang him, he is a turncoat! he was not true to his profession. I think God has stirred up even his enemies to hiss at him, and make him a proverb, because he hath forsaken the way. [Jer. 29:18,19]


 * 1813 — Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice.
 * "Both," replied Elizabeth archly; "for I have always seen a great similarity in the turn of our minds. We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb."