You Can't Get Blood Out of a Turnip

Inspired by the success of The Son of a Duck is a Floater, Apricots Tomorrow and Unload Your own Donkey, this gathering of Italian proverbs is intended to bring to its readers a smile of mutual recognition from the discovery of a pooled aphoristic wit and concision. Each proverb is given a literal translation and an English equivalent. These are sometimes identical, perhaps because of their Biblical or Latin origin, sometimes they are bizarrely askance, as the title illustrates.