HOW EASILY WE CAN BE MISLEAD

For years I heard, "A pint's a pound the world around."  A pint is 16 ounces of VOLUME, not weight.  To someone who thinks as concretely as I do, that confused me for years but can no longer forget to differentiate volume from weight.  Just ask Dr. Math 

Another useless phrase, often given as an inducement to patience , "Good things come to those who wait."  It doesn't seem to work in real life but it has made a good ad for Guiness stout and Heinz Ketchup..

"Familiarity breeds contempt." certainly should steer someone away from marriage.  Prov. People do not respect someone they know well enough to know his or her faults. Given all the divorces today, maybe it is a truism in marriage!!

Proverbs are short and pithy sayings that express some traditionally held truth. They are usually metaphorical and often, for the sake of memorability, alliterative

"A change is as good as a rest.".  That doesn't work for Republicans and those with autism, neither group is able to tolerate change, apparently.  "A soft answer turneth away wrath"  works for the deaf only. In all the years I have treated couples, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder" usually allowed one partner to find a new one.

"Doubt is the beginning not the end of wisdom"  This one will always ring true for me.  I take nothing for granted and began doubting religious zealots at age 5. Thus, "Faith will move mountains" stirs nothing in me but doubt.  I neither wish to move nor climb mountains...I just like proof of that which so many people declare as fact and truth.  "First things first"  This one at last makes sense to my concrete mind..  This one speaks to why I have never wanted to be in the first line of battle.  I prefer to wait until everyone else is too tired to continue the battle...at least that is true of most survivors.

"Seeing is believing" may have been true before the internet and modern software like PhotoShop.

"There are none so blind as those, that will not see"  Unfortunately this has too much relevance today.  We are inundated with con men and women in politics and too many other important places selling a different brand of snake oil.  Until people begin to realize there is not an exotic berry that is a cure-all for everything that ails man, that one-size-doesn't-fit-all, survival is, indeed, for the fittest...life will remain precarious.