catch more flies with honey than vinegar, one can
catch more flies with honey than vinegar, one can
One can accomplish more by being nice than by being nasty. A version of this term appears in Cervantes’s Don Quixote (“Make yourself into honey and the flies will devour you”), and a more precise version appears about 100 years later, in Thomas Fuller’s Gnomologia: “More Flies are taken with a Drop of Honey than a Tun of Vinegar.” It is a proverb in most European languages.
See also: can, catch, flies, honey, more, one
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer
- crown of glory
- abandon hope, all ye who enter here
- all hope abandon, ye who enter here
- bee in one's bonnet, to have a
- been in the wars
- jump bail
- skip bail
- butter won't melt (in one's mouth)
- butter wouldn't melt in one's mouth
- butter wouldn't melt in someone's mouth