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    Amish Proverbs: Words of Wisdom from the Simple Life
    Amish Proverbs: Words of Wisdom from the Simple Life
    Amish Proverbs: Words of Wisdom from the Simple Life
    Ebook104 pages1 hour

    Amish Proverbs: Words of Wisdom from the Simple Life

    By Suzanne Woods Fisher

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Through firsthand research and personal relationships, Suzanne Woods Fisher has collected more than 400 proverbs that uncover the rich heritage, folklore, faith, values, history, and essence of the Plain People. These proverbs serve as teaching tools and maxims for practical living--but they're not just for the Amish. They're for anyone who seeks God's wisdom and truth for everyday circumstances.

    Ranging from the simple to the profound, from the serious to the humorous, these sayings will stick with you through life's joys and sorrows. This expanded edition of Amish Proverbs includes more than 200 additional proverbs, giving readers more of the wit and wisdom they crave.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBaker Publishing Group
    Release dateOct 1, 2012
    ISBN9781441239730
    Amish Proverbs: Words of Wisdom from the Simple Life
    Author

    Suzanne Woods Fisher

    Suzanne Woods Fisher is the award-winning, bestselling author of more than forty books, including The Sweet Life, The Secret to Happiness, and Love on a Whim, as well as many beloved contemporary romance and Amish romance series. She is also the author of several nonfiction books about the Amish, including Amish Peace and Amish Proverbs. She lives in California. Learn more at SuzanneWoodsFisher.com and follow Suzanne on Facebook @SuzanneWoodsFisherAuthor and X @SuzanneWFisher.

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    Reviews for Amish Proverbs

    4.5/5

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    • 4/5
      This collection of Amish proverbs covers a variety of subjects in the life of the Amish community. Author Suzanne Woods Fisher begins each section with some background on the Amish way of life. Some proverbs are of a serious nature while others are humorous, but all are thought-provoking. Just remember, "Don't believe everything you think"!
    • 5/5
      This book is a treasure. It was more than I expected! From other reviews, I knew that there were Amish sayings and gorgeous pictures throughout. But I didn't know that there would be commentary from the author Suzann Woods Fisher about the Pennsylvania Dutch and one each for each section of the book. The different sections are: Time, Money, Faith, Children & Family, In Word & Deed, Handling Adversity, Education, Community, Character and Just for Fun. One of my favorites is "Enjoy today it won't come back". One thing that amazes me is how so many of these proverbs get into my mother's family's sayings. They were never Amish but a couple generations did live in Pennsylvania at one time. It would be interesting to trace the migration of these teachings. I am going to keep this little book on my book case by my chair so that I can pull it out anytime that I want. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about the Amish or learn more proverbs in general. I thank Suzanne Woods Fisher for writing this book and look forward to reading all of her others.
    • 4/5
      What a great book! It's broken up into chapters by topic, such as: money, time, faith, children & family, character, etc. They start out with a person and incident or experience that ties in with the subject and proverbs are then listed. They are each very thought provoking.
      The last chapter is for fun to show the Amish really do have a sense of humor. One of the proverbs listed for this chapter is: Nothing is quite so annoying as to have someone go right on talking when you are interrupting.

    Book preview

    Amish Proverbs - Suzanne Woods Fisher

    mother.

    Introduction

    The Amish in Their Own Words

    Most every culture has proverbs that are unique to it. Whether called maxims, bromides, truisms, idioms, expressions, sayings, or just an old saw, proverbs are small, concentrated packages that let us peek into the window of a people’s values and beliefs. They give us insight into a culture, its faith, folklore, history, language, mentality, psychology, worldview, and values. These pithy sayings are not meant to be universal truths. They contain general observations and experiences of humankind, including life’s multifaceted contradictions.

    Proverbs, radio Bible teacher J. Vernon McGee once said, are short sentences drawn from long experience.[1]

    The ancient Eastern world—Egypt, Greece, China, and India—is thought to be the home of proverbs, dating back to collections from as early as 2500 BC. King Solomon, who reigned in the tenth century BC, gathered many of them from other sources as well as edited and authored others. Over five hundred were compiled into the book of Proverbs in the Bible. Proverbs were used in monasteries to teach novices Latin. Often colorfully phrased, at times even musical in pronunciation, proverbs served as teaching tools for illiterate populations that relied on oral tradition.

    Interestingly, the proverbs have played a surprisingly prominent role in the speech of the Pennsylvania Germans, which includes—though isn’t limited to—the Amish. It is natural that the Pennsylvania Germans should use the proverb extensively, writes Dr. Edwin Miller Fogel in his book Proverbs of the Pennsylvania Germans, because of the fondness of the Germanic peoples for this form of expression. The proverbs are the very bone and sinew of the dialect.[2]

    The ones that are common in the community are most likely in the oral tradition, says Dr. Donald B. Kraybill, senior fellow at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College, Pennsylvania. Not particularly Amish, but part of the broader rural tradition of the area.[3]

    The Pennsylvania Deitsch dialect (which is called Penn Dutch, though it has no relationship to Holland) originated in the Palatinate area of Germany over four hundred years ago and was brought to Pennsylvania in the 1700s with a wave of immigrants: Lutherans, Mennonites, Moravians, Amish, German Brethren, and German Reformed. Penn Dutch was, and is, an oral language; even today, people from different states can understand one another since the language has remained close to its origins.

    Most of what they [German immigrants] knew, they brought here from the Old World, explains C. Richard Beam, retired full professor of German at Millersville University. The proverbs were an integral part of Pennsylvania German culture. The further back you go, the richer the language.

    The cleverness of a proverb, though, can be lost in translation. Here’s an example: Wer gut Fuddert, daer gut Buddert. Good feed, much butter. Here’s one that comes through a little smoother: Bariye macht Sarige. Borrowing makes sorrowing.

    Beam worries that the language has been watered down and diluted over this last century, as the external culture has crowded out its rich heritage. Raised in Pennsylvania, Beam says that all four of his grandparents spoke Deitsch as their first language. We spent time with aunts and uncles and grandparents. That led to a richness of the culture, a preservation of the language. This was prior to radio and television. Beam is now 84 years old. There’s a saying I was raised with: ‘Every time the sheep bleats, it loseth a mouthful.’ That applies directly to the culture today. The dialect is losing words, he says. Language doesn’t stand still.

    Today, only the Old Order Amish and the Old Order Mennonites have retained Deitsch as their first language. The Old Order Amish is a society that does not permit higher education. Theirs is a culture learned from the simplicity of their ancestors’ lifestyles, and the Amish value this heritage. This simple lifestyle, passed virtually unchanged through the generations, provides an ideal base for the continual use of proverbs.

    Within the last century, the use of proverbs in modern American society may have diminished, but not so for the Amish. In fact, the opposite is happening.

    The Sugarcreek Budget is a weekly newspaper for the Amish-Mennonite community that

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