Life – a user's manual Part II - Boksidan

About proverbs
Proverbs are complete sentences with exact wording, which are used to transfer life experience.
My mother often used such sentences, for example:
One should not cry over spilled milk.
When a toy of mine was broken.
Or
Too little or too much will spoil everything.
When she thought that I, for instance, had too much salt on my food.
One advantage of using proverbs, instead of an in the moment composed sentence, is that it reduces the risk
of having to explain further. Since, for example, the implied criticism, is not said directly, and thus is more
difficult to deal with. Additionally, the user can escape criticism, because standard phrases like proverbs are
often used a little carelessly.
And proverbs does by no means preach a single path through life. On the contrary, there are many proverbs
that speak against acts that other encurage (see table 1 in the Swedish version of this book). For the benefit
of those who master many proverbs, since they have appropriate words of wisdom, whatever the outcome
are of each adventure.
1.
Nordiska museet (The Nordic Museum) in Stockholm continuously collect information on various
specific issues from a variety of reporters around Sweden. One of these reports from a collection of
proverbs and sayings, is presented in its entirety in the Annex in the Swedish original text. It contains
approximately 700 proverbs and sayings that a 78-year-old and a 46 year old living in a village in
Ångermanland told a reporter in 1937. This particular report was selected from a large number of reports
on this subject, because it is written with a typewriter and therefore easy to read compared to most of
others that are handwritten. Although all sentences listed in the Annex are not proverbs, according to the
definition above, all sentences in the annex are from now on called proverbs.
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