'Also, Sancho, you must not interlard your conversation with the great many number of proverbs you usually do; for though proverbs are maxims in brief, you often drag them in by the hair, and they seem more like nonsense.'
   'Let God look after that,' answered Sancho, 'for I know more proverbs than a book, and so many of them come altogether into my mouth when I speak that they fight one another to get out; and the tongue seizes hold of the first it meets with, even though it mayn't be just to the point.'
—Miguel de Cervantes, The Adventures of Don Quixote, 1605