Can you share your pithy, old-fashioned sayings?

[JohnnyMcGrathSaysFuckOff]

DS is 7 and has a very folkloric imagination. He is always coming out with sayings that he has invented but that sound for a sec like they might be real.

I am going to make him a list of real proverbs and sayings as I think he'd get a kick out of it.

I'm starting with "many a mickle makes a muckle".... can you help me by adding your favourites???

I’ve seen better heads on a mug of beer (about someone unattractive)

My mother used to say a snack would "keep the worms quiet".

Why have a dog and do your own barking?

Nowt as queer as folk.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
There goes I but for the grace of god.

Man who walks through airport security sideways is going to Bangkok

Nowt so strange as folk

Your arse and parsely

just enough brains to know not to eat him/her self

all fur coat and no knickers

A couple of Australian ones...

If someone leaves quickly he's "off like a bride's nightie" or "off like a prawn in the sun".

A crazy person has "kangaroos in the top paddock".

My very earthy grandmother used describe her anticipation of someone being very angry on discovering something as
”he’ll have a fit with his leg up”
No idea where this comes from but she was born in very rural wiltshire in 1910.

What's for tea?

Windmill pie. If there's enough to go around we'll all have some.

Not one to teach your son, is it.

He can peel an orange in his pocket

Wouldn’t know a bee from a bull’s foot.

He/she didn’t lick it off the ground.

A blind man would like to see it( referring to a small flaw)
He could talk a glass eyeball to sleep
He piped his eye( false tears)

My mum had one "wont sick in your throat wont stick in your bum". She was a very dignified lady so was quite out of character.

Put wood in’t ‘ole
Hells bells and buckets of blood
what’s for tea ‘fried bugs and onions’ or ‘shit with sugar on’
You’d make a better door than window
When hungry ‘falling through me knicker leg’
Ominous black clouds ‘black as Dick’s hatband’

That’s neither use nor ornament.
i wouldn’t give it hoose room.
She’s gone right doon through herself.
What’s for dinner? Whamlims

All courtesy of my mother.

She’s got a face like a bag of spanner’s
A wolf in sheep’s clothing- someone whos nice to your face but has ulterior motives
my Irish mum says of someone who looks a bit ugly “she’s a hard looking old chaw”

The eye of the Master maketh the horse fat.

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

My mum, when we were going on about something we wanted.

Only a mother could love him.

cant make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear

You smell like a whore’s handbag (maybe not for a child!)

I’ve been up and down the stairs like a whore’s knickers (also not for a child!)

a face like a bucket of spades

same sows piggin (means that they are related somehow, same family in previous generation)

he has neither chick nor child (nobody to leave things to in context of inheritance)

he wouldn’t give you the skin of his fart (tight miser)

mad as a box of frogs

looks like they had a hard paper round (looks prematurely old)

If brains were dynamite, s/he wouldn’t have enough to blow their hat off.

Were you born in a barn?
Put wood in the hole.

Both mean the same thing in a roundabout way.

From the sea:
-get my bearings straight
-square things away
-hang him from the highest yard arm
-make a pier head leap
-I like the cut of his jib

From the US South:
-been rode hard and put away wet
-that dog won’t hunt
-well bless your heart
-let’s get it in the hopper

Others:
-giving him the business
-cold as a well diggers arse
-tough row to how

‘He’s not as green as he is cabbage looking’

It’s like Blackpool illuminations in here!

You can’t polish a turd

He/She could sell ice to eskimos!

Doesn't know their arse from their elbow.