I thought this would be an interesting topic. Remembering the cliches that we grew up hearing and how we may or may not have carried them on through our adult lives. I'll start... I have always been an earlier riser. I remember when I first heard 'The early bird catches the worm.' I never understood how my getting up earlier would help me catch a worm that I didn't even like back then but somehow that saying fit me pretty well and it has been one of my favorite cliches.
"Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise" I've always been an early to bed and early to rise person. I've enjoyed good health too. I don't know why I missed out on the other two.
"If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you, too?" "You can't have your cake and eat it too" - that one took me a long time to figure out!! (I may have been a little slow as a kid) "6 one, 1/2 dozen the other"
If you keep crossing your eyes, they'll stay that way. And of course, at the doctors: "This is going to pinch a little."
"Six of one, a half dozen of the other" just means that it's the same thing, used to indicate that two seemingly different arguments are actually the same thing.
The one that I remember my mother always telling me was one that I have never heard anyone else saying; but my mom must have learned it somewhere. Or, maybe, she just made it up; that is possible, too. My mother was that way. Anyway, what she always told me was this : "It is better to be a live chicken than a dead goose". She always wanted me to tink about things and not just impulsively do something that might end up being dangerous, or have bad results. I was an only child, and born when my parents were in their 40's, so she knew that if something happened to me, there was not going to be another chance. Being careful was the mantra that i grew up with. I guess that has been a good thing most of the times; but it has certainly stopped many adventures which might have been fun. Has anyone else heard this saying, or just me ? ?
It means that it doesn't make a difference which decision or choice you make. If you do one thing it equates to "6", if you do the other choice, it equates to "1/2 dozen". This was another one that my mother used to tell me when I was about 6 - talk about confusing. She never explained these cliches to me, I had to figure them out myself. When I was little, I thought she was saying, "6 1" like two different numbers, not meaning "6" was one choice, "1/2 dozen" was the other.
Didn't see where anyone else mentioned this one (if they have, I'm sorry), but it was a favorite of my mother's since we weren't allowed to "talk back", we always made faces to show our displeasure over something. "If you keep making that face, it'll freeze that way"
Here are few more my mother liked to say- "A bird in hand is worth two in the bush" - when we would start to daydreaming about what could be. "Action speaks louder than words" - when we said we were going to do something, just hadn't gotten around to it yet. "Like the blind leading the blind" - when we would do something stupid that our friend had done.
A hard head makes a soft butt. If you kept doing something and you were told to stop but you kept on doing it your bottom would not like it much.