In 1931, after completing her education at Winthrop College, 19-year-old Nancy Stroupe arrived in the mountains of western North Carolina from her home in the heart of South Carolina. She was very young and inexperienced when her educational career commenced, but she was armed with a few books and keepsake photographs and was full of plans to bring proper English to the children of Avery County. She was fascinated by the local people because they spoke what she called "the purest Elizabethan or Middle English in the world."Every school day, before students would embark on an exciting new expedition alongside Mrs. Stroupe in the study of history, literature, and the etymology of English and Latin, she would impart a new bit of knowledge by writing a different quote at the top of the blackboard. Mrs. Stroupe's teaching career spanned five decades and she was adored by at least three generations of students, most of whom can still recite The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales In this delightful tome is her entire collection of interesting and useful axioms, all of which predate 1966. Many of these were not used in the classroom but were kept for her own personal amusement. Saved from numerous sources throughout the decades and glued in a notebook that has long seen better days, these truisms are now presented to you for your own pleasure and educational enlightenment. May they bring a smile to your face and light the path of your own journey