proverbs

In Dutch we have tons of hard to translate proverbs, 'High trees catch a lot of wind' comes to mind in this case.

Plenty of proverbs would disagree. Oh darnit, you got me.

They are equivalent to proverbs or adages of real world. You cannot get rid of them, they are product of culture.

Read a list of proverbs and you've basically got what most self-help books and blogs say covered. A few years ago I bought into a lot of the self-help stuff.

Following your dream, being passionate, etc were the proverbs being lived by. Not a realistic analysis of how they would survive in non-minimum wage jobs.

He also contrasts them with French farmers who did virtually nothing in winter, Russians who came up with proverbs like "If God doesn't bring it, the earth will not give it" etc.

The attribution of things to 'ancient Native American proverbs' is reminiscent of the whole 'noble savage' trope.

I like this idea of modern proverbs, and look forward to finding more in the HN Comments. Here's what I'll provide: No story survives contact with the players: they will always outsmart you and come up with a novel solution to your best-designed traps.

On one level, we all know this stuff already -- it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichs, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness.

> When everyone isn't getting rich, everyone gets to fight with each other I like proverbs, they often distil penetrating wisdom. Over here, there's this saying: "Casa onde no h po, todos ralham, ningum tem razo" - literally translated, that's: in a home without bread, everybody nags/fights, no one is right.

I grew up learning many clichés, proverbs and tips, but most of them didn't really mean anything to me until I experienced them first-hand. I suppose tips like these are like uninitialized pointers - they aren't really useful until you have experiences to attach them to, but after that they are a handy way to access those experiences quickly.

I prefer koans to proverbs. Proverbs strike me as code without tests; they may seem superficially correct, but where's the proof?