usefulness. The true context for a proverb is not a collection or anthology of proverbs but actual situations of life. For a proverb to rise to our lips on such occasions, we need to be able to call the proverb to mind. Our cultural situation makes that difficult. 3. Indifference to wisdom. There is a sense in which proverbs were the ancient version of information storage and retrieval. I use that terminology to highlight the function served by proverbs. But the word “information” comes from our