I tried something this afternoon: I watched my pot until it boiled! Ah-ha! I think the proverb should read something more like:
“A watched pot boils eventually, but psychologically it seems to take a really long time.”
Or, how about:
“An apple a day is a good idea, but a healthy diet, combined with a reasonable exercise regimen will probably keep the doctor away, although it is impossible to be completely preventative regarding future illness.”
“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Or anybody.”
“You can teach some old dogs new tricks, but it can be hard.”
“You can sometimes get a free lunch, if you try hard enough.”
“Truth is stranger than fiction, unless you’ve read Naked Lunch.”
“You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, or without a heat source, or without some sort of filling, like cheese. Or vegetables.”
You made your bed, now lie in it. Just take off your shoes first, and don’t move around a lot, or you’ll have to make it again. And for Christ’s sake, stop moving the pillows around. They’re right where I like them.
If you count your chickens before they’re hatched, you can get a reasonable estimate of how many chickens you can expect, which is okay for general planning purposes but you might want to lowball it to allow for flexibility in the event the outcome is lower than anticipated.
I don’t get it. Is that because the first mouse got eaten by the cat or something?
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, most of the time. But if you’re really hoping to get socks for Christmas, or you enjoy getting into bloody fistfights with strangers, then don’t.
Look, and make sure that you will be safe, taking into account the hardness and elasticity of the surface you’re currently on, the hardness of the surface you’ll be leaping to, how far away it is, in both the horizontal and vertical directions, your own physical capabilities with regard to both jumping and landing, what would happen to you should you miss the opposite side and fall into the empty space between the two surfaces, whether you can really afford a broken arm/leg/neck/etc. at this point in your life, before you leap.
