Our parent's sayings

I, preteen crying, my mother warned me, "If you keep crying like that, your (outy) belly button will push farther out and look like a boy's *****." Though upset by her warning, I did not believe it, but I was afraid she was right about my navel being pushed out further and further, if I kept crying. (My outy became an inny. :) )
 

Elsie said:
I, preteen crying, my mother warned me, "If you keep crying like that, your (outy) belly button will push farther out and look like a boy's *****." Though upset by her warning, I did not believe it, but I was afraid she was right about my navel being pushed out further and further, if I kept crying. (My outy became an inny. :) )
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I think I was always too fat to have that issue! :)
 
"Cleanliness is next to Godliness"
(actually this wasn't a maxim of my mothers, though she could clean the house well when in her prime, but her comment generally was "They cant see the blemishes off the bus", as a way of explaining her attitude to not being so tidy etc., as she knew some people are! :whistle::unsure: )
 
"There is more than one way to skin a cat"!

(not one heard so often these days, but common enough when I grew up in the UK, and used by both my parents particularly my mother, though she never skinned any cats so far as I know! :) )
 
"Suck it and see"

(said to be like the saying, "The proof of the pudding is in the eating", but my recollection was my parents using it when you were asking too many questions, and you just needed to get on and try something. :) ).
 
One my parents used quite a lot:

"There are no flies on me"!

Or, "There are no flies on you"!

(possible origins, "No flies on you", is a complimentary phrase roughly translating to 'you are clever'. This has been Aussie slang since the 1840s and is one Australianism that has even made its way to the US, rather than the other way around.

The meaning in Australia is:
an expression indicating that someone is shrewd, cunning, and alert to deception.
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Another one I used to hear in my childhood was something like:

"Everyone sh**s on Fred", (no idea why "Fred", or maybe it was some other poor soul)
 
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OneEyedDiva said:
I don't remember if I posted this one and I'm not going through 12 pages to find out. My mother used to say "You never know what you're coming to in this life". Ain't that the truth!
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This kinda reminds me of what my mother once told me when I was going thru my divorce.
She said "you never know what the future holds"

They seems similar to me.

My dad used to call tall big guys....'a big drink of water' lol

Another one my mother used to say to me.....'if you don't watch your figure, no one else will either'
 
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"Little pigs have big ears" to whoever was about to say something not meant for the ears of little children. Not sure why we were pigs, well maybe an inkling lol. She and my Aunt used to have their own language, a form of pig English that I never could grasp.
 
"There are two sorts in this world, the quick and the dead"

Quote:
"The living and the dead. The word quick for “living” was used as far back as King Alfred’s time (cwicum in Middle English, ca. a.d. 897) but is rarely used in this meaning nowadays, except in this cliché and in cut to the quick. Amélie Rives used it as the title of her novel The Quick or the Dead (1888). A few decades later Britain’s Lord Dewar is quoted as saying, “There are two classes of pedestrians in these days of reckless motor traffic: the quick and the dead”

https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/the+quick+and+the+dead
 
My Mom would say to me "You want your cake and eat it too". It made no sense to me until later in life.
The saying is even in Wikipedia :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_can't_have_your_cake_and_eat_it

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"There are no flies on you"! :)

(Or "there are no flies on him",..., "someone who is quick to understand and not easily fooled"!).
 

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