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143-599: Some proverbs exist in more than one language because people borrow them from languages and cultures with which they are in contact. In the West, the Bible (including, but not limited to the Book of Proverbs ) and medieval Latin (aided by the work of Erasmus ) have played a considerable role in distributing proverbs. Not all Biblical proverbs, however, were distributed to the same extent: one scholar has gathered evidence to show that cultures in which

286-486: A Platonist or Pythagorean, in that such a one would have "the viewpoint of logical simplicity as an indispensable and effective tool of his research." British philosopher Alfred N. Whitehead is often misquoted of uttering the famous saying of "All of Western philosophy is a footnote to Plato." Many recent philosophers have also diverged from what some would describe as ideals characteristic of traditional Platonism. Friedrich Nietzsche notoriously attacked Plato's "idea of

429-547: A Soft Place", and the pair "Verbs of a feather flock together" and "Verbs of a feather flock together II". Proverbs have been noted as common in subtitles of articles such as "Discontinued intergenerational transmission of Czech in Texas: 'Hindsight is better than foresight'." Also, the reverse is found with a proverb (complete or partial) as the title, then an explanatory subtitle, "To Change or Not to Change Horses: The World War II Elections". Many authors have cited proverbs as epigrams at

572-488: A belief in the immortality of the soul, and several dialogues end with long speeches imagining the afterlife . In the Timaeus , Socrates locates the parts of the soul within the human body: Reason is located in the head, spirit in the top third of the torso , and the appetite in the middle third of the torso, down to the navel . Furthermore, Plato evinces a belief in the theory of reincarnation in multiple dialogues (such as

715-607: A boon; / The man who calls the piper / Will also call the tune." Eliza Griswold also created a poem by stringing proverbs together, Libyan proverbs translated into English. Because proverbs are familiar and often pointed, they have been used by a number of hip-hop poets. This has been true not only in the USA, birthplace of hip-hop, but also in Nigeria. Since Nigeria is so multilingual, hip-hop poets there use proverbs from various languages, mixing them in as it fits their need, sometimes translating

858-417: A character from that period. Some authors have used so many proverbs that there have been entire books written cataloging their proverb usage, such as Charles Dickens , Agatha Christie , George Bernard Shaw , Miguel de Cervantes , and Friedrich Nietzsche . On the non-fiction side, proverbs have also been used by authors for articles that have no connection to the study of proverbs. Some have been used as

1001-400: A descendant of two kings, Codrus and Melanthus . His mother was Perictione , descendant of Solon , a statesman credited with laying the foundations of Athenian democracy . Plato had two brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus , a sister, Potone , and a half brother, Antiphon. Plato may have travelled to Italy, Sicily , Egypt, and Cyrene . At 40, he founded a school of philosophy,

1144-489: A different doctrine with respect to Forms to Plato and Socrates. Aristotle suggests that Socrates' idea of forms can be discovered through investigation of the natural world, unlike Plato's Forms that exist beyond and outside the ordinary range of human understanding. The Socratic problem concerns how to reconcile these various accounts. The precise relationship between Plato and Socrates remains an area of contention among scholars. Although Socrates influenced Plato directly,

1287-524: A dozen proverbs in The Horse and His Boy , and Mercedes Lackey created dozens for her invented Shin'a'in and Tale'edras cultures; Lackey's proverbs are notable in that they are reminiscent to those of Ancient Asia – e.g. "Just because you feel certain an enemy is lurking behind every bush, it doesn't follow that you are wrong" is like to "Before telling secrets on the road, look in the bushes." These authors are notable for not only using proverbs as integral to

1430-483: A fellow disciple of Plato. A variety of sources have given accounts of Plato's death. One story, based on a mutilated manuscript, suggests Plato died in his bed, whilst a young Thracian girl played the flute to him. Another tradition suggests Plato died at a wedding feast. The account is based on Diogenes Laërtius's reference to an account by Hermippus, a third-century Alexandrian. According to Tertullian , Plato simply died in his sleep. According to Philodemus, Plato

1573-558: A few people were capable or interested in following a reasoned philosophical discourse, but men in general are attracted by stories and tales. Consequently, then, he used the myth to convey the conclusions of the philosophical reasoning. Notable examples include the story of Atlantis , the Myth of Er , and the Allegory of the Cave . When considering the taxonomic definition of mankind , Plato proposed

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1716-416: A fictional story set in a real society, the movie Forrest Gump introduced "Life is like a box of chocolates" into broad society. In at least one case, it appears that a proverb deliberately created by one writer has been naively picked up and used by another who assumed it to be an established Chinese proverb, Ford Madox Ford having picked up a proverb from Ernest Bramah , "It would be hypocrisy to seek for

1859-452: A fraction of a proverb to invoke an entire proverb, e.g. "All is fair" instead of "All is fair in love and war", and "A rolling stone" for "A rolling stone gathers no moss." The grammar of proverbs is not always the typical grammar of the spoken language. Elements are often moved around, to achieve rhyme or focus. Another type of grammatical construction is the wellerism , a speaker and a quotation, often with an unusual circumstance, such as

2002-442: A literal sense, not yet knowing how to understand the conventionalized metaphor. Interpretation of proverbs is also affected by injuries and diseases of the brain, "A hallmark of schizophrenia is impaired proverb interpretation." Proverbs in various languages are found with a wide variety of grammatical structures. In English, for example, we find the following structures (in addition to others): However, people will often quote only

2145-472: A participant in any of the dialogues, and with the exception of the Apology , there is no suggestion that he heard any of the dialogues firsthand. Some dialogues have no narrator but have a pure "dramatic" form, some dialogues are narrated by Socrates himself, who speaks in the first person. The Symposium is narrated by Apollodorus, a Socratic disciple, apparently to Glaucon. Apollodorus assures his listener that he

2288-477: A pattern of life that lasted for more than a millennium. It is an example of Biblical wisdom literature and raises questions about values, moral behavior, the meaning of human life, and right conduct, and its theological foundation is that "the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom." Wisdom is personified and praised for her role in creation; God acquired her before all else and gave order to chaos through her. As humans have life and prosperity by conforming to

2431-410: A person mishears one of Jesus Christ's beatitudes , "I think it was 'Blessed are the cheesemakers.'" Some books and stories are built around a proverb. Some of Tolkien's books have been analyzed as having "governing proverbs" where "the action of a book turns on or fulfills a proverbial saying." Some stories have been written with a proverb overtly as an opening, such as "A stitch in time saves nine" at

2574-559: A person that keeps moving, seeing moss as a positive thing, such as profit; others see the proverb as praising people that keep moving and developing, seeing moss as a negative thing, such as negative habits. Similarly, among Tajik speakers, the proverb "One hand cannot clap" has two significantly different interpretations. Most see the proverb as promoting teamwork. Others understand it to mean that an argument requires two people. In an extreme example, one researcher working in Ghana found that for

2717-504: A reference to something recent, such as the Haitian proverb "The fish that is being microwaved doesn't fear the lightning". Similarly, there is a recent Maltese proverb, wil-muturi, ferh u duluri "Women and motorcycles are joys and griefs"; the proverb is clearly new, but still formed as a traditional style couplet with rhyme. Also, there is a proverb in the Kafa language of Ethiopia that refers to

2860-547: A single Akan proverb, twelve different interpretations were given. Proverb interpretation is not automatic, even for people within a culture: Owomoyela tells of a Yoruba radio program that asked people to interpret an unfamiliar Yoruba proverb, "very few people could do so". Siran found that people who had moved out of the traditional Vute-speaking area of Cameroon were not able to interpret Vute proverbs correctly, even though they still spoke Vute. Their interpretations tended to be literal. Children will sometimes interpret proverbs in

3003-477: A slightly different use of reshaping proverbs, in the Aubrey–Maturin series of historical naval novels by Patrick O'Brian , Capt. Jack Aubrey humorously mangles and mis-splices proverbs, such as "Never count the bear's skin before it is hatched" and "There's a good deal to be said for making hay while the iron is hot." Earlier than O'Brian's Aubrey, Beatrice Grimshaw also used repeated splicings of proverbs in

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3146-491: A society, but are now no longer so widely known. For example, English speakers use some non-English proverbs that are drawn from languages that used to be widely understood by the educated class, e.g. "C'est la vie" from French and " Carpe diem " from Latin. Proverbs are often handed down through generations. Therefore, "many proverbs refer to old measurements, obscure professions, outdated weapons, unknown plants, animals, names, and various other traditional matters." Therefore, it

3289-486: A student or child, dramatic personifications of both Wisdom and Folly, and the "words of the wise" sayings, which are longer than the Solomonic "sayings" but shorter and more diverse than the "instructions." The first section ( chapters 1–9 ) comprises an initial invitation to young men to take up the course of wisdom, ten "instructions", and five poems on personified Woman Wisdom. Verses 1:1-7 constitute an introduction to

3432-535: A title alludes to a proverb, but does not actually quote much of it, such as The Gift Horse's Mouth by Robert Campbell. Some books or stories have titles that are twisted proverbs, anti-proverbs, such as No use dying over spilled milk , When life gives you lululemons, and two books titled Blessed are the Cheesemakers . The twisted proverb of last title was also used in the Monty Python movie Life of Brian , where

3575-487: A transmissible human craft, until with 30:1–14, the "words of Agur," we return once more to the idea that God alone possesses wisdom. "The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 9:10 – the phrase implies submission to God's will). Wisdom is praised for her role in creation ("God by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding, he established the heavens" – Proverbs 3:19). God acquired her before all else, and through her, he gave order to chaos ("When [God] established

3718-419: A tripartite class structure corresponding to the appetite/spirit/reason structure of the individual soul. The appetite/spirit/reason are analogous to the castes of society. According to Socrates, a state made up of different kinds of souls will, overall, decline from an aristocracy (rule by the best) to a timocracy (rule by the honourable), then to an oligarchy (rule by the few), then to a democracy (rule by

3861-500: A wife of noble character. It is impossible to offer precise dates for the sayings in Proverbs, a "collection of collections" relating to a pattern of life which lasted for more than a millennium. The phrase conventionally used for the title is taken from chapter 1:1, mishley shelomoh , Proverbs of Solomon (the phrase is repeated at 10:1 and 25:1), and is likely more concerned with labeling the material than ascribing authorship. The book

4004-431: Is a nickname . According to Diogenes Laërtius, writing hundreds of years after Plato's death, his birth name was Aristocles ( Ἀριστοκλῆς ), meaning 'best reputation'. "Platon" sounds like "Platus" or "Platos", meaning "broad", and according to Diogenes' sources, Plato gained his nickname either from his wrestling coach, Ariston of Argos, who dubbed him "broad" on account of his chest and shoulders, or he gained it from

4147-562: Is a skill that is developed over years. Additionally, children have not mastered the patterns of metaphorical expression that are invoked in proverb use. Proverbs, because they are indirect, allow a speaker to disagree or give advice in a way that may be less offensive. Studying actual proverb use in conversation, however, is difficult since the researcher must wait for proverbs to happen. An Ethiopian researcher, Tadesse Jaleta Jirata, made headway in such research by attending and taking notes at events where he knew proverbs were expected to be part of

4290-800: Is already implicitly known, or at exposing the contradictions and muddles of an opponent's position." Karl Popper , on the other hand, claims that dialectic is the art of intuition for "visualising the divine originals, the Forms or Ideas, of unveiling the Great Mystery behind the common man's everyday world of appearances". During the early Renaissance, the Greek language and, along with it, Plato's texts were reintroduced to Western Europe by Byzantine scholars. Some 250 known manuscripts of Plato survive. In September or October 1484 Filippo Valori and Francesco Berlinghieri printed 1025 copies of Ficino's translation, using

4433-477: Is also referenced by Jewish philosopher and Talmudic scholar Maimonides in his The Guide for the Perplexed . The works of Plato were again revived at the times of Islamic Golden ages with other Greek contents through their translation from Greek to Arabic. Neoplatonism was revived from its founding father, Plotinus. Neoplatonism, a philosophical current that permeated Islamic scholarship, accentuated one facet of

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4576-503: Is an anthology made up of six discrete units. The Proverbs of Solomon section, chapters 1–9, was probably the last to be composed, in the Persian or Hellenistic periods. This section has parallels to prior cuneiform writings. The second, chapters 10–22:16, carries the superscription "the proverbs of Solomon", which may have encouraged its inclusion in the Hebrew canon. The third unit, 22:17–24:22,

4719-571: Is as close as biblical literature comes to Greek philosophy, of which it was a contemporary; it shares with the Greeks an inquiry into values and reflections on the human condition, although there is no discussion of ontology , epistemology , metaphysics , and the other abstract issues raised by the Greeks. The rabbinic college almost excluded the Book of Proverbs from the Bible in the late first century. They did this because of its contradictions (the result of

4862-451: Is best". "The proverb has since been used in other contexts to prompt quick action." Over 1,400 new English proverbs are said to have been coined and gained currency in the 20th century. This process of creating proverbs is always ongoing, so that possible new proverbs are being created constantly. Those sayings that are adopted and used by an adequate number of people become proverbs in that society. The creation of proverbs in many parts of

5005-502: Is by no means universally accepted, though Plato's works are still often characterized as falling at least roughly into three groups stylistically. Plato's unwritten doctrines are, according to some ancient sources, the most fundamental metaphysical teaching of Plato, which he disclosed only orally, and some say only to his most trusted fellows, and which he may have kept secret from the public, although many modern scholars doubt these claims. A reason for not revealing it to everyone

5148-492: Is common that they preserve words that become less common and archaic in broader society. Archaic proverbs in solid form – such as murals, carvings, and glass – can be viewed even after the language of their form is no longer widely understood, such as an Anglo-French proverb in a stained glass window in York. Proverbs are often and easily translated and transferred from one language into another. "There

5291-692: Is embraced as a true local proverb in many places and should not be excluded in any collection of proverbs because it is shared by the neighbors. However, though it has gone through multiple languages and millennia, the proverb can be traced back to an ancient Babylonian proverb Another example of a widely spread proverb is "A drowning person clutches at [frogs] foam", found in Peshai of Afghanistan and Orma of Kenya, and presumably places in between. Proverbs about one hand clapping are common across Asia, from Dari in Afghanistan to Japan. Some studies have been done devoted to

5434-458: Is headed "bend your ear and hear the words of the wise". A large part of this section is a recasting of a second-millennium BCE Egyptian work, the Instruction of Amenemope , and may have reached the Hebrew author(s) through an Aramaic translation. Chapter 24:23 begins a new section and source with the declaration, "these too are from the wise". The next section at chapter 25:1 has a superscription to

5577-452: Is merely silly or playful (though see the words of Agur for a "fool" who has wisdom and could be seen as playful). For the most part, Proverbs offers a simplistic view of life with few grey areas: a life lived according to the rules brings reward, and life in violation of them is certain to bring disaster. In contrast, Job and Ecclesiastes appear to be direct contradictions of the simplicities of Proverbs, each in its own way all but dismissing

5720-635: Is not commonly used, but a form of it is still heard (or read) in the proverb "There is many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip." The conservative form preserves the meter and the rhyme. This conservative nature of proverbs can result in archaic words and grammatical structures being preserved in individual proverbs, as has been widely documented, e.g. in Amharic, Nsenga , Polish, Venda , Hebrew , Giriama , Georgian , Karachay-Balkar , Hausa , Uzbek , Budu of Congo , Kazakh . In addition, proverbs may still be used in languages which were once more widely known in

5863-447: Is nothing so uncertain as the derivation of proverbs, the same proverb being often found in all nations, and it is impossible to assign its paternity." Proverbs are often borrowed across lines of language, religion, and even time. For example, a proverb of the approximate form "No flies enter a mouth that is shut" is currently found in Spain, France, Ethiopia, and many countries in between. It

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6006-497: Is partially discussed in Phaedrus where Plato criticizes the written transmission of knowledge as faulty, favouring instead the spoken logos : "he who has knowledge of the just and the good and beautiful ... will not, when in earnest, write them in ink, sowing them through a pen with words, which cannot defend themselves by argument and cannot teach the truth effectually." It is, however, said that Plato once disclosed this knowledge to

6149-412: Is recounting the story, which took place when he himself was an infant, not from his own memory, but as remembered by Aristodemus, who told him the story years ago. The Theaetetus is also a peculiar case: a dialogue in dramatic form embedded within another dialogue in dramatic form. Some scholars take this as an indication that Plato had by this date wearied of the narrated form. In most of the dialogues,

6292-535: Is still found in languages around the world, with plenty of examples from Africa, including Yorùbá and Igbo of Nigeria. A film that makes rich use of proverbs is Forrest Gump , known for both using and creating proverbs. Other studies of the use of proverbs in film include work by Kevin McKenna on the Russian film Aleksandr Nevsky , Haase's study of an adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood , Elias Dominguez Barajas on

6435-428: Is the extension of its literal meaning. Some experts classify proverbs and proverbial phrases as types of idioms. Proverbs come from a variety of sources. Some are, indeed, the result of people pondering and crafting language, such as some by Confucius , Plato , Baltasar Gracián , etc. Others are taken from such diverse sources as poetry, stories, songs, commercials, advertisements, movies, literature, etc. A number of

6578-477: Is virtue. In the Republic , Plato poses the question, "What is justice?" and by examining both individual justice and the justice that informs societies, Plato is able not only to inform metaphysics, but also ethics and politics with the question: "What is the basis of moral and social obligation?" Plato's well-known answer rests upon the fundamental responsibility to seek wisdom, wisdom which leads to an understanding of

6721-525: The Gorgias and his ambivalence toward rhetoric expressed in the Phaedrus . But other contemporary researchers contest the idea that Plato despised rhetoric and instead view his dialogues as a dramatization of complex rhetorical principles. Plato made abundant use of mythological narratives in his own work; It is generally agreed that the main purpose for Plato in using myths was didactic. He considered that only

6864-529: The Laws features Socrates, although many dialogues, including the Timaeus and Statesman , feature him speaking only rarely. Leo Strauss notes that Socrates' reputation for irony casts doubt on whether Plato's Socrates is expressing sincere beliefs. Xenophon 's Memorabilia and Aristophanes 's The Clouds seem to present a somewhat different portrait of Socrates from the one Plato paints. Aristotle attributes

7007-560: The Water Margin ( Shuihu zhuan ) and one proverb every 4,000 words in Wen Jou-hsiang . But modern Chinese novels have fewer proverbs by far. Proverbs (or portions of them) have been the inspiration for titles of books: The Bigger they Come by Erle Stanley Gardner , and Birds of a Feather (several books with this title), Devil in the Details (multiple books with this title). Sometimes

7150-645: The Academy . It was located in Athens, on a plot of land in the Grove of Hecademus or Academus , named after an Attic hero in Greek mythology . The Academy operated until it was destroyed by Sulla in 84 BC. Many philosophers studied at the Academy, the most prominent being Aristotle. According to Diogenes Laërtius , throughout his later life, Plato became entangled with the politics of

7293-661: The Christian Old Testament traditionally ascribed to King Solomon and his students. When translated into Greek and Latin, the title took on different forms: in the Greek Septuagint (LXX), it became Παροιμίαι ( Paroimiai , "Proverbs"); in the Latin Vulgate , the title was Proverbia —from which the English name is derived. Proverbs is not merely an anthology but a "collection of collections" relating to

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7436-527: The Meno , Socrates uses a geometrical example to expound Plato's view that knowledge in this latter sense is acquired by recollection. Socrates elicits a fact concerning a geometrical construction from a slave boy, who could not have otherwise known the fact (due to the slave boy's lack of education). The knowledge must be of, Socrates concludes, an eternal, non-perceptible Form. Plato also discusses several aspects of epistemology . In several dialogues, Socrates inverts

7579-448: The Phaedo and Timaeus ). Scholars debate whether he intends the theory to be literally true, however. He uses this idea of reincarnation to introduce the concept that knowledge is a matter of recollection of things acquainted with before one is born, and not of observation or study. Keeping with the theme of admitting his own ignorance, Socrates regularly complains of his forgetfulness. In

7722-649: The Renaissance , George Gemistos Plethon brought Plato's original writings to Florence from Constantinople in the century of its fall. Many of the greatest early modern scientists and artists who broke with Scholasticism , with the support of the Plato-inspired Lorenzo (grandson of Cosimo), saw Plato's philosophy as the basis for progress in the arts and sciences. The 17th century Cambridge Platonists , sought to reconcile Plato's more problematic beliefs, such as metempsychosis and polyamory, with Christianity. By

7865-735: The Scholastic philosophers referred to Aristotle as "the Philosopher". The only Platonic work known to western scholarship was Timaeus , until translations were made after the fall of Constantinople , which occurred during 1453. However, the study of Plato continued in the Byzantine Empire , the Caliphates during the Islamic Golden Age , and Spain during the Golden age of Jewish culture . Plato

8008-610: The justified true belief definition in the Theaetetus , concluding that justification (or an "account") would require knowledge of difference , meaning that the definition of knowledge is circular . In the Sophist , Statesman , Republic , Timaeus , and the Parmenides , Plato associates knowledge with the apprehension of unchanging Forms and their relationships to one another (which he calls "expertise" in dialectic), including through

8151-457: The metaphysical tradition that strongly influenced Plato and continues today. Heraclitus viewed all things as continuously changing , that one cannot "step into the same river twice" due to the ever-changing waters flowing through it, and all things exist as a contraposition of opposites. According to Diogenes Laërtius, Plato received these ideas through Heraclitus' disciple Cratylus . Parmenides adopted an altogether contrary vision, arguing for

8294-435: The "twin pillars of Platonism" as the theory of Forms, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the doctrine of immortality of the soul. In the dialogues Socrates regularly asks for the meaning of a general term (e. g. justice, truth, beauty), and criticizes those who instead give him particular examples, rather than the quality shared by all examples. "Platonism" and its theory of Forms (also known as 'theory of Ideas') denies

8437-464: The 19th century, Plato's reputation was restored, and at least on par with Aristotle's. Plato's influence has been especially strong in mathematics and the sciences. Plato's resurgence further inspired some of the greatest advances in logic since Aristotle, primarily through Gottlob Frege . Albert Einstein suggested that the scientist who takes philosophy seriously would have to avoid systematization and take on many different roles, and possibly appear as

8580-571: The 1st century AD: Axiochus , Definitions , Demodocus , Epigrams , Eryxias , Halcyon , On Justice , On Virtue , Sisyphus . No one knows the exact order Plato's dialogues were written in, nor the extent to which some might have been later revised and rewritten. The works are usually grouped into Early (sometimes by some into Transitional ), Middle , and Late period; The following represents one relatively common division amongst developmentalist scholars. Whereas those classified as "early dialogues" often conclude in aporia ,

8723-428: The Bible is the major spiritual book contain "between three hundred and five hundred proverbs that stem from the Bible," whereas another shows that, of the 106 most common and widespread proverbs across Europe, 11 are from the Bible. However, almost every culture has its own unique proverbs. Lord John Russell ( c.  1850 ) observed poetically that a "proverb is the wit of one, and the wisdom of many." But giving

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8866-618: The Bini of Nigeria, there are three words that are used to translate "proverb": ere, ivbe , and itan . The first relates to historical events, the second relates to current events, and the third was "linguistic ornamentation in formal discourse". Among the Balochi of Pakistan and Afghanistan, there is a word batal for ordinary proverbs and bassīttuks for "proverbs with background stories". There are also language communities that combine proverbs and riddles in some sayings, leading some scholars to create

9009-505: The Book of Proverbs Plato Plato ( / ˈ p l eɪ t oʊ / PLAY -toe ; Greek : Πλάτων, Plátōn , born c.  428-423 BC, died 348 BC), was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the written dialogue and dialectic forms. He raised problems for what became all

9152-570: The Colossians calls Jesus "...image of the invisible God, first-born of all creation...", while the Gospel of John identifies him with the creative word ("In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"). In the 4th century, when Christianity was caught up in heresies and still developing the creeds which would define its beliefs, Proverbs 8:22 was used both to support and refute

9295-742: The Form of the Good. Plato views "The Good" as the supreme Form, somehow existing even "beyond being". In this manner, justice is obtained when knowledge of how to fulfill one's moral and political function in society is put into practice. The dialogues also discuss politics. Some of Plato's most famous doctrines are contained in the Republic as well as in the Laws and the Statesman . Because these opinions are not spoken directly by Plato and vary between dialogues, they cannot be straightforwardly assumed as representing Plato's own views. Socrates asserts that societies have

9438-553: The Forms are the causes of everything else, he [i.e. Plato] supposed that their elements are the elements of all things. Accordingly, the material principle is the Great and Small [i.e. the Dyad], and the essence is the One ( τὸ ἕν ), since the numbers are derived from the Great and Small by participation in the One". "From this account it is clear that he only employed two causes: that of the essence, and

9581-607: The Forms were the truths of geometry , such as the Pythagorean theorem . The theory of Forms is first introduced in the Phaedo dialogue (also known as On the Soul ), wherein Socrates disputes the pluralism of Anaxagoras , then the most popular response to Heraclitus and Parmenides. For Plato, as was characteristic of ancient Greek philosophy, the soul was that which gave life. Plato advocates

9724-537: The Islamic context, Neoplatonism facilitated the integration of Platonic philosophy with mystical Islamic thought, fostering a synthesis of ancient philosophical wisdom and religious insight. Inspired by Plato's Republic, Al-Farabi extended his inquiry beyond mere political theory, proposing an ideal city governed by philosopher-kings . Many of these commentaries on Plato were translated from Arabic into Latin and as such influenced Medieval scholastic philosophers. During

9867-519: The Lord!"), wisdom appeals to human reason and observation. The pre-Exilic (i.e. pre-586 BC) Old Testament allowed no equals to YHWH in heaven, despite the continued existence of an assembly of subordinate servant-deities . The post-Exilic writers of the Wisdom tradition developed the idea that Wisdom existed before creation and was used by God to create the universe: "Present from the beginning, Wisdom assumes

10010-675: The Pacific have them, such as Māori with whakataukī. Other Pacific languages do not, e.g. "there are no proverbs in Kilivila " of the Trobriand Islands . In the New World, there are almost no proverbs: "While proverbs abound in the thousands in most cultures of the world, it remains a riddle why the Native Americans have hardly any proverb tradition at all." Although, "as Mieder has commented . . .

10153-451: The Qur’anic conception of God—the transcendent—while seemingly neglecting another—the creative. This philosophical tradition, introduced by Al-Farabi and subsequently elaborated upon by figures such as Avicenna , postulated that all phenomena emanated from the divine source. It functioned as a conduit, bridging the transcendental nature of the divine with the tangible reality of creation. In

10296-540: The ages. Through Neoplatonism , he also greatly influenced both Christian and Islamic philosophy . In modern times, Alfred North Whitehead famously said: "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." There is a traditional story that Plato ( Ancient Greek : Πλάτων , Plátōn , from Ancient Greek : πλατύς , romanized :  platys , lit.   'broad')

10439-619: The assumptions of the "wise". Noteworthy also is the fact that the "mighty acts of God" ( the Exodus , the giving of the Torah at Sinai, the Covenant between God and Israel, etc.) which make up Israel's history are completely or almost completely absent from Proverbs and the other Wisdom books: in contrast to the other books of the Hebrew Bible, which appeal to divine revelation for their authority ("Thus says

10582-517: The basis for book titles, e.g. I Shop, Therefore I Am: Compulsive Buying and the Search for Self by April Lane Benson. Some proverbs been used as the basis for article titles, though often in altered form: "All our eggs in a broken basket: How the Human Terrain System is undermining sustainable military cultural competence" and "Should Rolling Stones Worry About Gathering Moss?", "Between a Rock and

10725-697: The beginning of "Kitty's Class Day", one of Louisa May Alcott 's Proverb Stories . Other times, a proverb appears at the end of a story, summing up a moral to the story, frequently found in Aesop's Fables , such as " Heaven helps those who help themselves " from Hercules and the Wagoner . In a novel by the Ivorian novelist Ahmadou Kourouma , "proverbs are used to conclude each chapter". Proverbs have also been used strategically by poets. Sometimes proverbs (or portions of them or anti-proverbs ) are used for titles, such as "A bird in

10868-563: The beginning of their articles, e.g. "'If you want to dismantle a hedge, remove one thorn at a time' Somali proverb" in an article on peacemaking in Somalia. An article about research among the Māori used a Māori proverb as a title, then began the article with the Māori form of the proverb as an epigram "Set the overgrown bush alight and the new flax shoots will spring up", followed by three paragraphs about how

11011-447: The book's origins as not just an anthology but an anthology of anthologies). The reader is told, for example, both to "not answer a fool according to his folly," according to 26:4, and to "answer a fool according to his folly", as 26:5 advises. More pervasively, the recurring theme of the initial unit (chapters 1–9) is that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but the following units are much less theological, presenting wisdom as

11154-574: The borrowing may have been through plural languages. In some cases, it is possible to make a strong case for discerning the direction of the borrowing based on an artistic form of the proverb in one language, but a prosaic form in another language. For example, in Ethiopia there is a proverb "Of mothers and water, there is none evil." It is found in Amharic , Alaaba language , and Oromo , three languages of Ethiopia: The Oromo version uses poetic features, such as

11297-547: The breadth of his eloquence, or his wide forehead. Philodemus , in extracts from the Herculaneum papyri , corroborates the claim that Plato was named for his "broad forehead". Seneca the Younger , writing hundreds of years after Plato's death, writes "His very name was given him because of his broad chest." According to the traditional story, Plato was originally named after his paternal grandfather, supposedly called Aristocles;

11440-627: The bush" by Lord Kennet and his stepson Peter Scott and " The blind leading the blind " by Lisa Mueller. Sometimes, multiple proverbs are important parts of poems, such as Paul Muldoon 's "Symposium", which begins "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it hold its nose to the grindstone and hunt with the hounds. Every dog has a stitch in time..." In Finnish there are proverb poems written hundreds of years ago. The Turkish poet Refiki wrote an entire poem by stringing proverbs together, which has been translated into English poetically yielding such verses as "Be watchful and be wary, / But seldom grant

11583-421: The cat. Some authors have created proverbs in their writings, such as J.R.R. Tolkien , and some of these proverbs have made their way into broader society. Similarly, C. S. Lewis is credited for a proverb regarding a lobster in a pot, which he wrote about in his book series Chronicles of Narnia . In cases like this, deliberately created proverbs for fictional societies have become proverbs in real societies. In

11726-480: The causation of good and of evil". The most important aspect of this interpretation of Plato's metaphysics is the continuity between his teaching and the Neoplatonic interpretation of Plotinus or Ficino which has been considered erroneous by many but may in fact have been directly influenced by oral transmission of Plato's doctrine. A modern scholar who recognized the importance of the unwritten doctrine of Plato

11869-491: The character of a writer were attributed to that writer even when the actual author was unknown. The works taken as genuine in antiquity but are now doubted by at least some modern scholars are: Alcibiades I (*), Alcibiades II (‡), Clitophon (*), Epinomis (‡), Letters (*), Hipparchus (‡), Menexenus (*), Minos (‡), Lovers (‡), Theages (‡) The following works were transmitted under Plato's name in antiquity, but were already considered spurious by

12012-420: The city of Syracuse , where he attempted to replace the tyrant Dionysius , with Dionysius's brother-in-law, Dion of Syracuse , whom Plato had recruited as one of his followers, but the tyrant himself turned against Plato. Plato almost faced death, but was sold into slavery. Anniceris , a Cyrenaic philosopher, bought Plato's freedom for twenty minas , and sent him home. Philodemus however states that Plato

12155-671: The claims of the Arians . The Arians, assuming that Christ could be equated with the "Wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:24), argued that the Son, like Wisdom, was "created", and therefore subordinate to the Creator; their opponents, who argued that the relevant Hebrew word should be translated as "begot", won the debate, and the Nicene Creed declared that the Son was "begotten, not made", meaning that God and Christ were consubstantial . Online translations of

12298-412: The collections as follows: "Proverb" is a translation of the Hebrew word mashal , but "mashal" has a wider range of meanings than the short, catchy saying implied by the English word. Thus, roughly half the book is made up of "sayings" of this type, while the other half consists of longer poetic units of various types. These include "instructions" formulated as advice from a teacher or parent addressed to

12441-484: The common man's intuition about what is knowable and what is real. Reality is unavailable to those who use their senses. Socrates says that he who sees with his eyes is blind. While most people take the objects of their senses to be real if anything is, Socrates is contemptuous of people who think that something has to be graspable in the hands to be real. In the Theaetetus , he says such people are eu amousoi (εὖ ἄμουσοι), an expression that means literally, "happily without

12584-542: The complete written philosophical work of Plato, based on the first century AD arrangement of Thrasyllus of Mendes . The modern standard complete English edition is the 1997 Hackett Plato: Complete Works , edited by John M. Cooper. Thirty-five dialogues and thirteen letters (the Epistles ) have traditionally been ascribed to Plato, though modern scholarship doubts the authenticity of at least some of these. Jowett mentions in his Appendix to Menexenus, that works which bore

12727-410: The concept of form as distinct from matter, and that the physical world is an imitation of an eternal mathematical world. These ideas were very influential on Heraclitus, Parmenides and Plato. The two philosophers Heraclitus and Parmenides , influenced by earlier pre-Socratic Greek philosophers such as Pythagoras and Xenophanes , departed from mythological explanations for the universe and began

12870-499: The conversations. Many authors have used proverbs in their writings, for a very wide variety of literary genres: epics, novels, poems, short stories. Probably the most famous user of proverbs in novels is J. R. R. Tolkien in his The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings series. Herman Melville is noted for creating proverbs in Moby-Dick and in his poetry. Also, C. S. Lewis created

13013-546: The development of the characters and the story line, but also for creating proverbs. Among medieval literary texts, Geoffrey Chaucer 's Troilus and Criseyde plays a special role because Chaucer's usage seems to challenge the truth value of proverbs by exposing their epistemological unreliability. Rabelais used proverbs to write an entire chapter of Gargantua . The patterns of using proverbs in literature can change over time. A study of "classical Chinese novels" found proverb use as frequently as one proverb every 3,500 words in

13156-403: The effect that the following proverbs were transcribed "by the men of Hezekiah", indicating at face value that they were collected in the reign of Hezekiah in the late 8th century BCE. Chapters 30 and 31 (the "words of Agur," the "words of Lemuel," and the description of the ideal woman) are a set of appendices, quite different in style and emphasis from the previous chapters. The "wisdom" genre

13299-453: The famous Euthyphro dilemma in the dialogue of the same name: "Is the pious ( τὸ ὅσιον ) loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" ( 10a ) In the Protagoras dialogue it is argued through Socrates that virtue is innate and cannot be learned, that no one does bad on purpose, and to know what is good results in doing what is good; that knowledge

13442-401: The film Viva Zapata! , and Aboneh Ashagrie on The Athlete (a movie in Amharic about Abebe Bikila ). Television programs have also been named with reference to proverbs, usually shortened, such Birds of a Feather and Diff'rent Strokes . In the case of Forrest Gump , the screenplay by Eric Roth had more proverbs than the novel by Winston Groom , but for The Harder They Come ,

13585-718: The following definition, "A proverb is a short, generally known sentence of the folk which contains wisdom, truth, morals, and traditional views in a metaphorical, fixed, and memorizable form and which is handed down from generation to generation". To distinguish proverbs from idioms, cliches, etc., Norrick created a table of distinctive features , an abstract tool originally developed for linguistics. Prahlad distinguishes proverbs from some other, closely related types of sayings, "True proverbs must further be distinguished from other types of proverbial speech, e.g. proverbial phrases, Wellerisms , maxims, quotations, and proverbial comparisons." Based on Persian proverbs, Zolfaghari and Ameri propose

13728-653: The following definition: "A proverb is a short sentence, which is well-known and at times rhythmic, including advice, sage themes and ethnic experiences, comprising simile, metaphor or irony which is well-known among people for its fluent wording, clarity of expression, simplicity, expansiveness and generality and is used either with or without change." There are many sayings in English that are commonly referred to as "proverbs", such as weather sayings. Alan Dundes , however, rejects including such sayings among truly proverbs: "Are weather proverbs proverbs? I would say emphatically 'No!'" The definition of "proverb" has also changed over

13871-520: The following, a representative of a wellerism proverb found in many languages: "The bride couldn't dance; she said, 'The room floor isn't flat.'" Another type of grammatical structure in proverbs is a short dialogue: Because many proverbs are both poetic and traditional, they are often passed down in fixed forms. Though spoken language may change, many proverbs are often preserved in conservative, even archaic , form. "Proverbs often contain archaic... words and structures." In English, for example, "betwixt"

14014-475: The forced military conscription of the 1980s, "...the one who hid himself lived to have children." A Mongolian proverb also shows evidence of recent origin, "A beggar who sits on gold; Foam rubber piled on edge." Another example of a proverb that is clearly recent is this from Sesotho : "A mistake goes with the printer." A political candidate in Kenya popularised a new proverb in his 1995 campaign, Chuth ber "Immediacy

14157-533: The good itself" along with many fundamentals of Christian morality, which he interpreted as "Platonism for the masses" in Beyond Good and Evil (1886). Martin Heidegger argued against Plato's alleged obfuscation of Being in his incomplete tome, Being and Time (1927). Karl Popper argued in the first volume of The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) that Plato's proposal for a " utopian " political regime in

14300-510: The heavens… when he drew a circle on the face of the Deeps … when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him" – Proverbs 8:27–31). Since humans have life and prosperity by conforming to the order of creation, seeking wisdom is the essence and goal of the religious life. Wisdom, or the wise person, is compared and contrasted with foolishness or the fool, meaning one who is lacking in wisdom and uninterested in instruction, not one who

14443-768: The idea of a changeless, eternal universe and the view that change is an illusion. Plato's most self-critical dialogue is the Parmenides , which features Parmenides and his student Zeno , which criticizes Plato's own metaphysical theories. Plato's Sophist dialogue includes an Eleatic stranger. These ideas about change and permanence, or becoming and Being, influenced Plato in formulating his theory of Forms. In Plato's dialogues, Socrates and his company of disputants had something to say on many subjects, including several aspects of metaphysics . These include religion and science, human nature, love, and sexuality. More than one dialogue contrasts perception and reality , nature and custom, and body and soul. Francis Cornford identified

14586-535: The influence of Pythagoras , or in a broader sense, the Pythagoreans, such as Archytas also appears to have been significant. Aristotle and Cicero both claimed that the philosophy of Plato closely followed the teachings of the Pythagoreans . According to R. M. Hare , this influence consists of three points: Pythagoras held that all things are number, and the cosmos comes from numerical principles. He introduced

14729-464: The initial ha in both clauses with the final -aa in the same word, and both clauses ending with -an . Also, both clauses are built with the vowel a in the first and last words, but the vowel i in the one syllable central word. In contrast, the Amharic and Alaaba versions of the proverb show little evidence of sound-based art. However, not all languages have proverbs. Proverbs are (nearly) universal across Europe, Asia, and Africa. Some languages in

14872-401: The label "proverb riddles". Another similar construction is an idiomatic phrase. Sometimes it is difficult to draw a distinction between idiomatic phrase and proverbial expression. In both of them the meaning does not immediately follow from the phrase. The difference is that an idiomatic phrase involves figurative language in its components, while in a proverbial phrase the figurative meaning

15015-516: The lyrics for Beauty and the Beast , Gaston plays with three proverbs in sequence, "All roads lead to.../The best things in life are.../All's well that ends with...me." Book of Proverbs The Book of Proverbs ( Hebrew : מִשְלֵי , Mišlê ; Greek : Παροιμίαι ; Latin : Liber Proverbiorum , "Proverbs (of Solomon)") is a book in the third section (called Ketuvim ) of the Hebrew Bible and

15158-523: The major areas of both theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy , and was the founder of the Platonic Academy , a philosophical school in Athens where Plato taught the doctrines that would later become known as Platonism . Plato's most famous contribution is the theory of forms (or ideas) , which has been interpreted as advancing a solution to what is now known as the problem of universals . He

15301-546: The material cause; for the Forms are the cause of the essence in everything else, and the One is the cause of it in the Forms. He also tells us what the material substrate is of which the Forms are predicated in the case of sensible things, and the One in that of the Forms ;– that it is this the duality (the Dyad, ἡ δυάς ), the Great and Small ( τὸ μέγα καὶ τὸ μικρόν ). Further, he assigned to these two elements respectively

15444-480: The mouth of an eccentric marquis to create a memorable character in The Sorcerer's Stone , such as "The proof of the pudding sweeps clean" (p. 109) and "A stitch in time is as good as a mile" (p. 97). Because proverbs are so much a part of the language and culture, authors have sometimes used proverbs in historical fiction effectively, but anachronistically, before the proverb was actually known. For example,

15587-405: The muses". In other words, such people are willingly ignorant, living without divine inspiration and access to higher insights about reality. Many have interpreted Plato as stating – even having been the first to write – that knowledge is justified true belief , an influential view that informed future developments in epistemology. Plato also identified problems with

15730-482: The name "Plato" was only used as a nickname; and the philosopher could not have been named "Plato" because that name does not occur previously in his family line. Modern scholarship tends to reject the "Aristocles" story. Plato always called himself Platon . Platon was a fairly common name (31 instances are known from Athens alone), including people named before Plato was born. Robin Waterfield states that Plato

15873-505: The novel Ramage and the Rebels , by Dudley Pope is set in approximately 1800. Captain Ramage reminds his adversary "You are supposed to know that it is dangerous to change horses in midstream" (p. 259), with another allusion to the same proverb three pages later. However, the proverb about changing horses in midstream is reliably dated to 1864, so the proverb could not have been known or used by

16016-446: The one who has two houses loses his mind."), The Green Ray , Boyfriends and Girlfriends . Movie titles based on proverbs include Murder Will Out (1939 film) , Try, Try Again , and The Harder They Fall . A twisted anti-proverb was the title for a Three Stooges film, A Bird in the Head . The title of an award-winning Turkish film, Three Monkeys , also invokes a proverb, though

16159-463: The order of creation, seeking wisdom is the essence and goal of life. The book of Proverbs is divided into sections: the initial invitation to acquire wisdom, another section focused mainly on contrasting the wise and the fool, and the third being moral discourses on various topics. Chapters 25–29 discuss justice, the wicked, and the rich and poor; chapter 30 introduces the " sayings of Agur " on creation and divine power. The superscriptions divide

16302-498: The original. For example, "They forget say ogbon ju agbaralo They forget that wisdom is greater than power" Some authors have bent and twisted proverbs, creating anti-proverbs, for a variety of literary effects. For example, in the Harry Potter novels, J. K. Rowling reshapes a standard English proverb into "It's no good crying over spilt potion" and Dumbledore advises Harry not to "count your owls before they are delivered". In

16445-431: The other examples of the biblical wisdom tradition – Job and Ecclesiastes and some other writings – Proverbs raises questions of values, moral behavior, the meaning of human life, and righteous conduct. The three retain an ongoing relevance for both religious and secular readers, Job and Ecclesiastes through the boldness of their dissent from received tradition, Proverbs in its worldliness and satiric shrewdness. Wisdom

16588-660: The other hand, if one derives one's account of something by way of the non-sensible Forms, because these Forms are unchanging, so too is the account derived from them. That apprehension of Forms is required for knowledge may be taken to cohere with Plato's theory in the Theaetetus and Meno . Indeed, the apprehension of Forms may be at the base of the account required for justification, in that it offers foundational knowledge which itself needs no account, thereby avoiding an infinite regression . Several dialogues discuss ethics including virtue and vice, pleasure and pain, crime and punishment, and justice and medicine. Socrates presents

16731-547: The people), and finally to tyranny (rule by one person, rule by a tyrant). Several dialogues tackle questions about art, including rhetoric and rhapsody. Socrates says that poetry is inspired by the muses , and is not rational. He speaks approvingly of this, and other forms of divine madness (drunkenness, eroticism, and dreaming) in the Phaedrus , and yet in the Republic wants to outlaw Homer's great poetry, and laughter as well. Scholars often view Plato's philosophy as at odds with rhetoric due to his criticisms of rhetoric in

16874-472: The person of the Sacred Emperor in a Low Tea House." The proverb with "a longer history than any other recorded proverb in the world", going back to "around 1800 BC" is in a Sumerian clay tablet, "The bitch by her acting too hastily brought forth the blind". Though many proverbs are ancient, they were all newly created at some point by somebody. Sometimes it is easy to detect that a proverb is newly coined by

17017-465: The primary speaker is Socrates, who employs a method of questioning which proceeds by a dialogue form called dialectic. The role of dialectic in Plato's thought is contested but there are two main interpretations: a type of reasoning and a method of intuition. Simon Blackburn adopts the first, saying that Plato's dialectic is "the process of eliciting the truth by means of questions aimed at opening out what

17160-577: The printing press  [ it ] at the Dominican convent of San Jacopo di Ripoli  [ it ] . The 1578 edition of Plato's complete works published by Henricus Stephanus ( Henri Estienne ) in Geneva also included parallel Latin translation and running commentary by Joannes Serranus ( Jean de Serres ). It was this edition which established standard Stephanus pagination , still in use today. The text of Plato as received today apparently represents

17303-420: The processes of collection and division . More explicitly, Plato himself argues in the Timaeus that knowledge is always proportionate to the realm from which it is gained. In other words, if one derives one's account of something experientially, because the world of sense is in flux, the views therein attained will be mere opinions. Meanwhile, opinions are characterized by a lack of necessity and stability. On

17446-558: The proverb served as a metaphor for the research and the present context. A British proverb has even been used as the title for a doctoral dissertation: Where there is muck there is brass . Proverbs have also been used as a framework for an article. Similarly to other forms of literature, proverbs have also been used as important units of language in drama and films. This is true from the days of classical Greek works to old French to Shakespeare, to 19th Century Spanish, 19th century Russian, to today. The use of proverbs in drama and film today

17589-609: The public in his lecture On the Good ( Περὶ τἀγαθοῦ ), in which the Good ( τὸ ἀγαθόν ) is identified with the One (the Unity, τὸ ἕν ), the fundamental ontological principle. The first witness who mentions its existence is Aristotle, who in his Physics writes: "It is true, indeed, that the account he gives there [i.e. in Timaeus ] of the participant is different from what he says in his so-called unwritten teachings ( Ancient Greek : ἄγραφα δόγματα , romanized :  agrapha dogmata )." In Metaphysics he writes: "Now since

17732-695: The reality of the material world, considering it only an image or copy of the real world. According to this theory of Forms, there are these two kinds of things: the apparent world of material objects grasped by the senses, which constantly changes, and an unchanging and unseen world of Forms, grasped by reason ( λογική ). Plato's Forms represent types of things, as well as properties , patterns, and relations , which are referred to as objects. Just as individual tables, chairs, and cars refer to objects in this world, 'tableness', 'chairness', and 'carness', as well as e.g. justice , truth , and beauty refer to objects in another world. One of Plato's most cited examples for

17875-433: The reason for the visible lack of proverbs was probably the inability of foreign researchers to identify proverbial utterances among those peoples." Hakamies has examined the matter of whether proverbs are found universally, a universal genre, concluding that they are not. Proverbs are used in conversation by adults more than children, partially because adults have learned more proverbs than children. Also, using proverbs well

18018-599: The reverse is true, where the novel derived from the movie by Michael Thelwell has many more proverbs than the movie. Éric Rohmer , the French film director, directed a series of films, the "Comedies and Proverbs", where each film was based on a proverb: The Aviator's Wife , The Perfect Marriage , Pauline at the Beach , Full Moon in Paris (the film's proverb was invented by Rohmer himself: "The one who has two wives loses his soul,

18161-450: The role of master builder while God establishes the heavens, restricts the chaotic waters, and shapes the mountains and fields." Borrowing ideas from Greek philosophers who held that reason bound the universe together, the Wisdom tradition taught that God's Wisdom, Word and Spirit were the ground of cosmic unity. Christianity in turn adopted these ideas and applied them to Jesus: the Epistle to

18304-456: The so-called "middle dialogues" provide more clearly stated positive teachings that are often ascribed to Plato such as the theory of Forms. The remaining dialogues are classified as "late" and are generally agreed to be difficult and challenging pieces of philosophy. It should, however, be kept in mind that many of the positions in the ordering are still highly disputed, and also that the very notion that Plato's dialogues can or should be "ordered"

18447-401: The spread of proverbs in certain regions, such as India and her neighbors and Europe. An extreme example of the borrowing and spread of proverbs was the work done to create a corpus of proverbs for Esperanto , where all the proverbs were translated from other languages. It is often not possible to trace the direction of borrowing a proverb between languages. This is complicated by the fact that

18590-488: The term "featherless biped", and later ζῷον πολιτικόν ( zōon politikon ), a "political" or "state-building" animal ( Aristotle 's term, based on Plato's Statesman ). Diogenes the Cynic took issue with the former definition, reportedly producing a recently plucked chicken with the exclamation of "Here is Plato’s man!" (variously translated as "Behold, a man!"; "Here is a human!" etc.). Plato never presents himself as

18733-642: The title does not fully quote it. They have also been used as the titles of plays: Baby with the Bathwater by Christopher Durang , Dog Eat Dog by Mary Gallagher , and The Dog in the Manger by Charles Hale Hoyt . The use of proverbs as titles for plays is not, of course, limited to English plays: Il faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermée (A door must be open or closed) by Paul de Musset . Proverbs have also been used in musical dramas, such as The Full Monty , which has been shown to use proverbs in clever ways. In

18876-401: The well known sayings of Jesus, Shakespeare, and others have become proverbs, though they were original at the time of their creation, and many of these sayings were not seen as proverbs when they were first coined. Many proverbs are based on stories, often the end of a story. For example, the proverb " Who will bell the cat ?" is from the end of a story about the mice planning how to be safe from

19019-411: The whole of this section. Proverbs 10:1–22:16, with 375 sayings, consists of two parts, the first part (10–14) contrasting the wise man and the fool (or the righteous and the wicked), the second (15–22:16) addressing wise and foolish speech. Verse 22:17 opens ‘the words of the wise’, until verse 24:22, with short moral discourses on various subjects. An additional section of sayings which "also belong to

19162-404: The wise" follows in verses 24:23-34. Chapters 25–29, attributed to the editorial activity of "the men of Hezekiah ", contrast the just and the wicked and broach the topic of rich and poor. Chapter 30:1-4, the "sayings of Agur", introduces creation, divine power, and human ignorance. Chapter 31, "the sayings of King Lemuel — an inspired utterance his mother taught him", describes a virtuous woman,

19305-560: The word "proverb" the sort of definition theorists need has proven to be a difficult task, and although scholars often quote Archer Taylor 's argument that formulating a scientific "definition of a proverb is too difficult to repay the undertaking... An incommunicable quality tells us this sentence is proverbial and that one is not. Hence no definition will enable us to identify positively a sentence as proverbial," many students of proverbs have attempted to itemize their essential characteristics. More constructively, Wolfgang Mieder has proposed

19448-565: The world during the Corona-virus era showed how quickly proverbs and anti-proverbs can be created. Interpreting proverbs is often complex, but is best done in a context. Interpreting proverbs from other cultures is much more difficult than interpreting proverbs in one's own culture. Even within English-speaking cultures, there is difference of opinion on how to interpret the proverb " A rolling stone gathers no moss ." Some see it as condemning

19591-581: The years. For example, the following was labeled "A Yorkshire proverb" in 1883, but would not be categorized as a proverb by most today, "as throng as Throp's wife when she hanged herself with a dish-cloth". The changing of the definition of "proverb" is also noted in Turkish . In other languages and cultures, the definition of "proverb" also differs from English. In the Chumburung language of Ghana, " aŋase are literal proverbs and akpare are metaphoric ones". Among

19734-486: Was Heinrich Gomperz who described it in his speech during the 7th International Congress of Philosophy in 1930. All the sources related to the ἄγραφα δόγματα have been collected by Konrad Gaiser and published as Testimonia Platonica . Plato's thought is often compared with that of his most famous student, Aristotle , whose reputation during the Western Middle Ages so completely eclipsed that of Plato that

19877-510: Was buried in the garden of his academy in Athens, close to the sacred shrine of the Muses. In 2024, a scroll found at Herculaneum was deciphered, that confirmed some previous theories. The papyrus says that before death Plato "retained enough lucidity to critique the musician for her lack of rhythm", and that he was buried "in his designated garden in the Academy of Athens". Plato never speaks in his own voice in his dialogues ; every dialogue except

20020-538: Was decisively influenced by the pre-Socratic thinkers Pythagoras , Heraclitus , and Parmenides , although much of what is known about them is derived from Plato himself. Along with his teacher Socrates , and Aristotle , his student, Plato is a central figure in the history of Western philosophy . Plato's entire body of work is believed to have survived intact for over 2,400 years—unlike that of nearly all of his contemporaries. Although their popularity has fluctuated, they have consistently been read and studied through

20163-478: Was not a nickname, but a perfectly normal name, and "the common practice of naming a son after his grandfather was reserved for the eldest son", not Plato. According to Debra Nails, Plato's grandfather was the Aristocles who was archon in 605/4. Plato was born in Athens or Aegina , between 428 and 423 BC. He was a member of an aristocratic and influential family. His father was Ariston, who may have been

20306-604: Was sold as a slave as early as in 404 BC, when the Spartans conquered Aegina, or, alternatively, in 399 BC, immediately after the death of Socrates. After Dionysius's death, according to Plato's Seventh Letter , Dion requested Plato return to Syracuse to tutor Dionysius II , who seemed to accept Plato's teachings, but eventually became suspicious of their motives, expelling Dion and holding Plato against his will. Eventually Plato left Syracuse and Dion would return to overthrow Dionysius and rule Syracuse, before being usurped by Callippus ,

20449-430: Was widespread throughout the ancient Near East , and reading Proverbs alongside the examples recovered from Egypt and Mesopotamia reveals the common ground shared by international wisdom. The wisdom literature of Israel may have been developed in the family, the royal court, and houses of learning and instruction; nevertheless, the overwhelming impression is of instruction within the family in small villages. Along with

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