“There is a southern proverb—fine words butter no parsnips.”
Walter Scott book A Legend of Montrose
A Legend of Montrose (1819), Ch. 3.
Contemporary version of English proverb "fine words butter no parsnips". Attributed to Major in The Guardian, 31 January 1998, p. 13m, and on Have I Got News For You, 1 May 1997
Attributed
“There is a southern proverb—fine words butter no parsnips.”
Walter Scott book A Legend of Montrose
A Legend of Montrose (1819), Ch. 3.
John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs
Yes yes, said she, for all those wise words uttered,
I know on which side my bread is buttered.
But there will no butter cleave on my bread.
And on my bread any butter to be spread.
Every promise that you therein do utter,
Is as sure as it were sealed with butter.
Part II, chapter 7.
Proverbs (1546)
“If you put butter and salt on it, it tastes like salty butter.”
Terry Pratchett book Moving Pictures
Source: Moving Pictures
Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist
Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter II, Part II, Appendix to Articles I and II.
Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright
Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Unplaced as yet by chapter, Ch. 11.
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) novelist
Sorrows of Werther, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).