Internet Archive Book: Dictionary of American Proverbs

Wolfgang Mieder is one of the world's greatest scholars of proverbs (you can find out more about him at Wikipedia), and you can enjoy his Dictionary of American Proverbs, just a click away at the Internet Archive:

As Mieder and his co-editors, Stewart Kingsbury and Kelsie Harder, explain in the preface, this is not just a compilation of proverbs from previously published collections; instead, the book is based on actual field research in the United States and in parts of Canada. The research process took four decades, and the resulting book contains approximately 15,000 proverbs as actually used in American speech during the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

The entries are organized by keywords, and for each entry you can see where the proverb was collected. There are also parallel passages cited for proverbs that appear in previously published collections. Here's the start of the "equality" proverbs for example:

So, if you are curious about American proverbs, this massive volume is a perfect place to start, and you can even use the power of the Internet Archive to search the whole book. If you are interested in foxes for example (I am!), you can find any proverbs that mention the fox beyond just the proverbs listed under the entry for "fox," such as this one in the "dog" section: If the dog hadn't stopped to smell the tree, he would have caught the fox.

Thousands upon thousands of proverbs, just waiting for you to read and enjoy.

Dictionary of American Proverbs

by Wolfgang Mieder,

Stewart Kingsbury and Kelsie Harder