That's it! I just thought there was more to it than that.. but that's it. I googled it and it was one of many in the seventies and now it's the title and lyrics (refrain) in a song by Kristina Maria.
How about, "make hay while the sun shines", and "never put off until tomorrow what you can do today". I'm a procrastinator, so I always say, "Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow", which my son seems to have picked up on and taken to heart.
How about the opposite of, "Better late than sorry", which would have been, "That's like closing the barn door after the cows get out". My mom's favorite, when we were being exasperating, "I only have one nerve left, and you're getting on it". The next step up was "If you don't stop, I'm going to slap you clear into next week!!" That's when you knew you were in trouble.
And before that, "Don't put all you eggs in one basket". Wow, I see that this is message 36 - we certainly got told a lot of cliches when we were younger. I wonder if the younger generation could come up with as many. I know when I was younger, I swore I'd never tell my kids these things. Let's hope they don't all die out with our generation.
I like them, because they actually teach lessons, for the most part. Many youngsters don't understand what they mean, so the lessons are lost. I worked with brain injury patients for a time, and we worked with them on sayings like this to re-develop their abstract thinking.
Unfortunately if the younger generation comes up with any, they'll be peppered with the F word! Cynical? Yeah, but true. Seems like that's all I hear anymore. Cliches were clever at least.
And as much as we may have hated to hear them, they did teach us principals and morals. They were a way to teach us right from wrong, and to think critically. That's so sadly missing in parenting today. I see parents all the time look away from a misbehaving child, trying to ignore the fact that their little Johnny is a heathen. Or else, you hear the endless, "Stop, don't make me tell you again", only to hear them say it 50 times. Our parents did their best to teach us about the world, and about what would be expected of us as adults. I guess that's why we see so many kids spend 6-8 years in college than move back home and live in the basement.
This was somewhat before my time, but it was still used by my parents, grandparents, and others, in my presence: Loose lips sink ships. I doubt many in the younger crowd would understand what it meant in general, let alone the origin.
That was before my time too, but not by too much, having been born in 1951. That was actually a U.S. propaganda campaign, which acknowledged the fact that Germany had spies living among U.S. citizens, gathering information from the regular soldiers or sailors, as well as the general public that could be helpful to them, in particular, when a ship might be setting out, or where they were going.
play fast and loose Fast and Loose was the name of an old cheating game, played in the middle of the 16th century. As explained by James O. Halliwell in his Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, Obsolete Phrases, Proverbs and Ancient Customs, from the Fourteenth Century (damn, that's a long title), Fast and Loose was "a cheating game that was played with a stick and a belt or string, so arranged that a spectator would think he could make the latter fast by placing a stick through its intricate folds, whereas the operator could detach it at once." However, the game must have been known much earlier than that because the phrase was defined in Tottel's Miscellany in 1547, as being synonymous with "to say one thing and do another," "to be slippery as an eel," or "to have loose morals." There is also a reference from that time period to a married student who played fast and loose, meaning he was unfaithful to his wife. touch and go "Touch and go" is used to express an uncertain, risky, or precarious state, or a narrow escape. It is believed that this phrase originated among sailors, as a reference to situations where a ship has found itself in a rocky area. With a large hit, the ship might sink or become stranded upon the rocks, so the phrase was used to describe a ship touching upon a rock, then moving on, touching upon another, and hopefully eventually finding its way out of the precarious situation.