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poet Robert Burns, which takes the form of a regretful speech to a field mouse whose nest he has overturned while ploughing. In it he describes his sorrow for the mouse as it discovers that the home it thought it could shelter in cosily throughout the winter is no more. The verse that the proverb comes from reads:

    But Mousie, thou art no thy lane
    [alone ] ,
    In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley [Often go awry ] ,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an pain,
For promised joy!

    Burns was widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and several of his works have become so central to the fabric of Scottish cultural life that they have woven themselves into the country’s folklore. Burns also wrote the words to ‘Auld Lang Syne’, which is traditionally sung on Hogmanay or New Year’s Eve in Britain and the United States and the endurance of this phrase is testament to his status as a poet. Its popularity may also have been enhanced by John Steinbeck’s use of part of the phrase as the title of his 1937 novel –  Of Mice and Men .
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Still waters run deep
    This phrase is thought to originate from central Asia in the days before the Persian Empire, when the region north of the Hindu Kush was known as Bactria.
    The saying is quoted in a biography of Alexander the Great, written between ad 41 and 54, by the Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus : ‘Altissima quaeque flumina minimo sono labi ,’ which translates as ‘The deepest rivers flow with least sound.’
    As with any piece of history with such an ancient provenance it is impossible to be sure of the details surrounding its early applications, but it seems likely that it was used literally as a reminder of the dangers of attempting to cross a river that looked calm. For Alexander the Great and his vast armies, a shallow river would have been passable but deep water was a threat. If a river ran quietly and its surface was smooth, it might because the rocks along the riverbed were so deeply submerged that they didn’t disturb the flow of water.
    In 1300 the proverb appeared, as ‘There the flode is deppist the water standis stillist’, in the popular Middle English poem Cursor Mundi , which is likely to have played an important role in cementing it in British folklore. The theologian Thomas Draxe included ‘Where riuers runne most stilly, they are the deepest’ in his Bibliotheca scholastica instructissima. Or, Treasurie of Ancient Adagies and Sententious Proverbes … (1616), and it was subsequently picked up by other authors and compilers.
    At some stage the saying evolved into a metaphor for the way someone with an outwardly placid temperament is often passionate or hot-blooded underneath, and this is how we use the phrase today.
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A stitch in time saves nine
    Advocating the benefits of acting promptly, this saying simply means that fixing a problem as soon as it is spotted will save time later as it can only get worse – getting the needle and thread out to carry out a timely mend might require just a single stitch whereas if you ignore the hole until it has grown larger, you’ll have to spend more time and use more stitches to mend it. (‘Nine’ stitches probably only because it came nearest to rhyming with ‘time’.)
    The phrase’s literal applications would have rung true for most common people in centuries gone by as fabric was very expensive and clothing had to last. Most garments were made from wool or linen and where they wore thin or tore they would have been mended.
    The adage is likely to have been passed on by word of mouth for many years before it was finally put into print in 1732 in Thomas Fuller’s Gnomologia, in which the phrase was given, as:

    A stitch in time may save nine.

    In 1797 English astronomer Francis Baily left