Though the cat winks awhile, yet sure she is not blind.
Meaning: Temporary inattention doesn't indicate genuine inability; the cat merely feigns sleep while remaining watchful.
Origin: Recorded in A Dictionary of English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, an undated collection published in London by Whittaker & Co. around 1880 and credited to Thomas Preston. Its earlier history hasn't been traced.
More proverbs about Wisdom
- Those are wise who learn caution from their own experience; but those are wiser who learn it from the experience of others. — Benefiting from others' mistakes costs less than accumulating your own painful lessons.
- There is nothing certain in this life but death and taxes! — Mortality and financial obligation are life's only inevitabilities, making all other plan…
- I'm too old a bird to be caught by chaff. — Experience teaches you to recognize deception disguised as something worthless or trivial.
- The chamber of sickness is the chapel of devotion. — Illness strips away life's distractions, leaving only the essential human need to seek me…
- It chanceth in an hour that comes not in seven years. — Fortune can deliver in moments what patient waiting over years might never produce.
- Change of pasture makes fat calves. — New environments and fresh opportunities allow young, developing people to thrive and gro…
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