Can't see the forest for the trees

This phrase shows up, in print, in the book authored by John Heywood. The proverb reads, "Plentie is nodeintie, ye see not your owne ease. I see, ye can not see the wood for trees." The grammatical structure of the phrase is a bit off-putting in today's language but back in Heywood's day the word "for" was used as the words "because of". Tweaking it to today's grammar it would read, "Can't see the forest because of the trees." (source)

I confess, this phrase has always made me scratch my head. I think I was getting hung up on the word "for" and now that I know a bit more about the etymological information it makes a little more sense. But I still don't like it, I'm not keen on it. Maybe it's just because it is nature based and I'm an indoors girl. *wink* Another way to think about the phrase is, "to be overwhelmed by detail to the point where it obscures the overall situation." And then I am struck by the irony, I've allowed the details of this actual phrase to obscure the overall phrase. HA!

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A dime a dozen

"It's said that in the year 1796, the first U.S. dimes were produced for circulation. Hence, it would make sense for this phrase to originate sometime after." Read more here . Today the phrase carries the meaning that something is cheap or without value if it can be lumped in with other similar or exactly-like things. It's more of an insult than anything.

Butter someone up

There are two probable origins for this idiom and I think both are equally plausible. The first one is that when you spread butter on bread you are buttering it up like one would do when trying to flatter someone. The second is in ancient India there was a practice of throwing balls of butter at statues to ask for favor, i.e. buttering them up. ( source ) When we use the phrase today we generally mean that extreme flattery is used to gain information or favor. It's not always necessarily a compliment.

Life according to van Gogh...sort of

There are two ways of thinking about painting, how not to do it and how to do it; how to do it -- with much drawing and little color; how not to do it -- with much color and little drawing. Vincent van Gogh in a l etter to Theo van Gogh, April 1882 Life is a little bit like today's quote from van Gogh. Some of us live life focusing on the drawing - the details - and have very little color. Others of us go for the color and forsake, to a degree, the drawing - the details. Unlike painting, according to van Gogh, one is not wrong over the other but somewhere in between the two would be the best I would think. If you look at some of van Gogh's paintings I feel like you can see where he might have struggled between the "how to do it" and the " how not to do it" (as he admittedly loved color so much but knew he had to focus more on the drawing) and that seems to be reflected in his life as well. In the end he wasn't able to find the ...

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