“He always looked a given horse in the mouth.”
Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel
Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Gargantua (1534), Chapter 11.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“He always looked a given horse in the mouth.”
Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel
Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Gargantua (1534), Chapter 11.
“No man ought to looke a given horse in the mouth.”
John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs
Part I, chapter 5.
Proverbs (1546), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Never look a gift horse in the mouth.”
Noli equi dentes inspicere donati.
Jerome (345–420) Catholic saint and Doctor of the Church
On the Epistle to the Ephesians
Commentaries, New Testament
“He ne'er consider'd it, as loth
To look a gift-horse in the mouth.”
Samuel Butler (poet) (1612–1680) poet and satirist
Canto I, line 490
Source: Hudibras, Part I (1663–1664)
Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo
Source: Magic Bites
“A team of horses cannot overtake a word that has left the mouth.”
Arthur Waley (1889–1966) British academic
Source: Translations, Monkey: Folk Novel of China (1942), Ch. 27 (p. 266)
“The greatest sermons are the ones given with a closed mouth and an open heart.”
Steve Maraboli (1975)
Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 135
“OATS — A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.”
Samuel Johnson book A Dictionary of the English Language
A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)