Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
That’s what my Mam-ma, Willie Stevens Cook, used to say. She had sayings for everything. A stitch in time saves nine. Knee high to a grasshopper. You’ve got to take the bitter with the sweet. Every cloud has a silver lining.
When I was in college, and working part-time at a bookstore, I might add, Mam-ma wrote down all the phrases and maxims and “old sayings” she could think of, in pencil on little pieces of paper from a notepad. She gave them to me and said I should type them up and publish them in a book.
Mam-ma was a lot smarter than me.
“No publisher is going to pay for a list of old sayings,” I thought. Maybe if I researched them, and wrote the history of the saying and the meaning behind it, someone would be interested. Maybe. Who would buy just a list of old sayings.
It didn’t take very long for me to be proven wrong. Within a year or two of Mam-ma handing me those notes, several books came out that were just lists of old sayings. Exactly what I thought couldn’t get published and wouldn’t sell if they did.
I kicked myself every time I sold one of those stupid books.
Rhyme Schemes and Daydreams 