To woo is a pleasure in young men, a fault in old.
Meaning: Courtship befits youth's exuberance but reveals desperation or impropriety in the aged.
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
- 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.
- He who maketh others wretched is himself a wretch, whether prince or peasant. — Cruelty corrupts the perpetrator's own soul regardless of their social station or power.
From our untranslatable words
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- Razliubit — To fall out of love — the process of ceasing to love someone you once loved, leaving behi…
- Mamihlapinatapai — The look between two people who both want the same thing but neither is willing to initia…