A wonder lasts but nine days.
Meaning: Public fascination with novelty inevitably fades as the extraordinary becomes familiar and forgotten.
Origin: Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde (c. 1385) already says that wonder lasts only nine nights in town, and John Heywood's 1546 collection has "This wonder lasted nine days." A "nine days' wonder" is any sensation that is soon forgotten.
More proverbs about Wisdom
- To woo is a pleasure in young men, a fault in old. — Courtship befits youth's exuberance but reveals desperation or impropriety in the aged.
- One woodcock does not make a winter. — A single favorable occurrence cannot establish a lasting pattern or justify confident pre…
- One half of the world knows not how the other half lives. — Wealth and privilege create invisible barriers preventing the comfortable from understand…
- The world is his who knows how to wait for it. — Patience allows strategic advantage; those who resist rushing seize opportunities others…
- The worst spoke in the cart-wheel breaks first. — Weakest components fail under strain, revealing themselves before stronger ones.
- He that is thrown would ever wrestle. — One who has suffered defeat becomes perpetually combative, unable to accept vulnerability.