After dinner sit awhile, after supper walk a mile.
Meaning: Digestion benefits from rest after heavy meals and movement after light ones.
Origin: Advice on digestion from the days when dinner was the main meal, eaten at midday, and supper a light one in the evening. The rule was already current in medieval Latin — post prandium stabis, post coenam ambulabis, after lunch stand still, after supper walk about — and English kept it as a rhyme.
More proverbs about Wisdom
- Two in distress make sorrows less. — Shared suffering becomes more bearable when you have someone to endure it alongside you.
- Sweet discourse makes short days and nights. — Engaging conversation makes time pass pleasantly, transforming tedium into enjoyment thro…
- An ounce of discretion is worth a pound of wit. — Knowing when to stay silent protects you better than any clever remark ever could.
- Disease is oft the tax of pleasure. — Indulgent pursuits exact physical costs; excess demands bodily payment.
- To know the disease is half the cure. — Identifying the root problem enables effective solutions more readily than treating sympt…
- We must do as we may, if we cannot do as we would. — Pragmatism requires accepting imperfect solutions when ideal circumstances remain beyond…
From our idioms
- retourner à la case départ — To find oneself back where one began, as if no progress had been made.
- sentir la naphtaline — To be old-fashioned or antiquated.
- passer maître — To become the foremost expert in something.