When the cat winketh, little wots the mouse what the cat thinketh.
Meaning: A predator's benign appearance masks hidden intentions; never trust surface calm from those with power over you.
Origin: From 'A Dictionary of English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases' (1870). Public domain.
More proverbs about Wisdom
- Though the cat winks awhile, yet sure she is not blind. — Temporary inattention doesn't indicate genuine inability; the cat merely feigns sleep whi…
- 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.
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