SOURCE: McKenna, Kevin J. “Proverbs and the Empress: The Role of Russian Proverbs in Catherine the Great's All Sorts and Sundries.” In Proverbs and Russian Literature: From Catherine the Great to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, pp. 25-41. Burlington: University of Vermont Press, 1998.

In this essay, McKenna cites Catherine's facility with employing Russian proverbs as an aspect of her light satirical style in her Spectator-influenced journal Vsiakaia vsiachina.

One of the many proverbs cited in Vladimir Dal's Proverbs of the Russian People notes that “An ancient proverb is not used for nothing.”¹ The seemingly vague wisdom of this particular saying was no more appreciated than by one of Russia's greatest czars or, in this case, czarinas, i.e. Catherine II or, as we more commonly know her—Catherine the Great. On first impulse one might register surprise that a German-born princess, transplanted to the Russian capital at the tender age...