If a trip around the world cost a dollar, I couldn’t get to the Oklahoma line. So rich they can eat fried chicken all week long. She’s got more than she can say grace over. He could sit on the fence and the birds would feed him. He’s riding a gravy train with biscuit wheels. He could draw a pat hand from a stacked deck. I hear you clucking, but I can’t find your nest. He’s missing a few buttons off his shirt. There’s a light or two burned out on his string. He’ll squeeze a nickel till the buffalo screams. He’ll eat anything that don’t eat him first. He’s big enough to bear hunt with a branch. He don’t care what you call him as long as you call him to supper. I’ll wear my Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. We’ll paint the town and the front porch. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. There’s a big difference between the ox and the whiffletree. The barn door’s open and the mule’s trying to run. There’s more than one way to break a dog from sucking eggs.ĭon’t hang your wash on someone else’s line.ĭo God’s will, whatever the hell it may be.īetter to keep your mouth shut and seem a fool than to open it and remove all doubt. If you cut your own firewood, it’ll warm you twice. You can’t get lard unless you boil the hog. Keep your saddle oiled and your gun greased.
Just because a chicken has wings don’t mean it can fly. General AdviceĪ worm is the only animal that can’t fall down. They lived so far out in the country that the sun set between their house and town. He’s so country he thinks a seven-course meal is a possum and a six-pack. Just fell off the turnip (watermelon, tater) truck. Illustration by Tom Curry Unsophisticated
She’s jumping like hot grease (or water) on a skillet. Got to slop the hogs, dig the well, and plow the south forty before breakfast. It’s been dry so long, we only got a quarter-inch of rain during Noah’s Flood.īusy as a one-legged man at an ass-kicking convention.īusy as a stump-tailed bull in fly season. So dry the catfish are carrying canteens. So dry the birds are building their nests out of barbed wire. He may not be a chicken, but he has his henhouse ways. He’s yellow as mustard but without the bite. If he was melted down, he couldn’t be poured into a fight. He stays in the shadow of his mama’s apron. He’ll tell you how the cow ate the cabbage. She raised hell and stuck a chunk under it. She could start a fight in an empty house. She’d charge hell with a bucket of ice water. He’s got more guts than you could hang on a fence. If I say a hen dips snuff, you can look under her wing for the can.īrave as the first man who ate an oyster. He’s so honest you could shoot craps with him over the phone. I wouldn’t trust him any farther than I can throw him. She’s more slippery than a pocketful of pudding. So crooked he has to unscrew his britches at night. He knows more ways to take your money than a roomful of lawyers. So crooked you can’t tell from his tracks if he’s coming or going. So crooked that if he swallowed a nail he’d spit up a corkscrew. He’s on a first-name basis with the bottom of the deck. So crooked that if he swallowed a nail, he’d spit up a corkscrew. Can’t dance, never could sing, and it’s too wet to plow. It’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. We asked twelve renowned artists to illustrate their favorite Texas sayings, and we present as well a sample of other axioms and adages common to the state-a collection of sayings as big as all hell and half of Texas. Some sayings are instantly familiar because our parents or grandparents quoted them others parallel the indisputable wisdom of biblical proverbs or Poor Richard’s Almanac plenty just make us laugh. A version of this article appears in our 2019 ‘Love Letters to Texas’ collector’s issue.Ĭommon as cornbread, old as dirt, funny as all get-out-homespun expressions link modern Texans to our rural and agricultural past, conveying the resolute spirit and plainspoken humor of our heroes and pioneers. This digitized version has since been updated to remove offensive lines. Editors’ note: This article was first published in print in 1994.
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