adage

in a sentence

I condemn myself in so many ways that I'm beginning to realize the truth of Father's adage: "Every child has to raise itself."  (source) Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl, 1952

The adage is quite right: The old fool is the complete fool.  (source) Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity, 1980

This goes back to the stay-perfectly-still-so-you-don't-sink adage.  (source) Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places, 2016

"A doctor a day keeps the jim-jams away," he added heartily, driving home his hypnopaedic adage with a clap on the shoulder.  (source) Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, 1932

Another of Henri's adages: Those things that are most obvious are the very things we're most likely to overlook.†  (source) Pittacus Lore, I Am Number Four, 2010

You must have heard the old adage that there's power in knowing someone's true name.†  (source) Susan Ee, Angelfall, 2012

Heraclitus—who lived around 500 B.C.—composed a number of adages, what are called his "apothegms of change," all of which tell us that everything is changing at every moment, that the movement of time causes ceaseless change in the cosmos.†  (source) Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor, 2003

This strange response was an ancient Hermetic adage that proclaimed a belief in the physical connection between heaven and earth.†  (source) Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol, 2009

He has bought two specimens of poultry, which, if there be any truth in adages, were certainly not caught with chaff, to be prepared for the spit; he has amazed and rejoiced the family by their unlooked-for production; he is himself directing the roasting of the poultry; and Mrs. Bagnet, with her wholesome brown fingers itching to prevent what she sees going wrong, sits in her gown of ceremony, an honoured guest.†  (source) Charles Dickens, Bleak House, 1853

She explained that the adage served to remind people to always be on their best behavior and to be good to others.†  (source) Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone, 2007

altars of their churches, I hear the responsive base and soprano, I hear the cry of the Cossack, and the sailor's voice putting to sea at Okotsk, I hear the wheeze of the slave-coffle as the slaves march on, as the husky gangs pass on by twos and threes, fasten'd together with wrist-chains and ankle-chains, I hear the Hebrew reading his records and psalms, I hear the rhythmic myths of the Greeks, and the strong legends of the Romans, I hear the tale of the divine life and bloody death of the beautiful God the Christ, I hear the Hindoo teaching his favorite pupil the loves, wars, adages, transmitted safely to this day from poets who wrote three thousand years ago.†  (source) Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1855

Sometimes she'd recall that old adage-the shoemaker's sons go barefoot-and she'd wonder, What about the children of the man who knows the value of happiness?†  (source) Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes, 2007

Wasn't that the adage Sister Mary Joseph Praise lived by?†  (source) Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone, 2009