quite impertinent.

     Only two more items in this part of our mosaic of The  
Gutenberg Galaxy  are needed. One of them is timeless, and the 
other is right on the focal point of the sixteenth century 
metamorphosis via print. First, then, the matter of the proverb, 
the maxim, the aphorism, as an indispensable mode of oral 
society. Chapter 18 of J. Huizinga’s The Waning of the Middle  
Ages  is devoted to this theme of how in an oral society, ancient 
or modern,

     . . . every event, every case, fictitious or historic, tends to 
     crystallize, to become a parable, an example, a proof, in 
     order to be applied as a standing instance of a general 
     moral truth. In the same way every utterance becomes a 
     dictum, a maxim, a text. For every question of conduct