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Gustatory Wisdom: Bruegel the Elder's Twelve Proverbs (1558)

Gustatory Wisdom: Bruegel the Elder's Twelve Proverbs (1558)

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·February 26, 2025
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lqet

It was surprisingly difficult to get a translation for each of the proverbs, I found one here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/28433765@N07/with/27922467233

Top to bottom, left to right:

1. Beware of playing game of dice and drunkenness, because it makes you poor, ruins your reputation and stinks

2. I am a placebo, and I am of the attitude that I hang my coat to the wind.

3. I carry fire in one hand and water in the other; in the company of chatterboxes and scandalmongers I hold my mouth.

4. When it comes to drinking nobody can outdo me; now that I have lost everything I find myself sitting between two chairs in the ashes.

5. Looking woeful and pitiful serves no purpose; I fill in the hole when the calf has drowned.

6. He who pleasure in idle work doth take, is like to strew roses before swine.

7. The armor gives me courage, I hang a bell around the cat's neck

8. The prosperity of my neighbor causes me much heartache, I do not want the sun to shine in the water.

9. I am touchy and out of my senses bull-headed, so I bang my head against a brick wall.

10. The lean is my lot, the fat the lot of another, I always fish behind the net.

11. I hide under a blue mantle, the more I hide the better known I become.

12. Whatever I pursue, I cannot reach it, I keep pissing against the moon.