Welcome! Art, short stories, comics, essays and other things from Maureen, Jesse, Abigail and John Pesta.
The proverb “fine words butter no parsnips” has been a recurring joke in our family for years. If ever someone made a boastful promise or floated a dubious claim, John “Dad” Pesta was ready with a smackdown straight out of the 1600s. “Fine words butter no parsnips,” he’d say. Talk is cheap.
That’s why we picked it for the name of this site, a place we’d do creative things instead of talking about doing them.
By the way if you think nobody actually says it, you’d be wrong. Here’s proof, courtesy of a Google alert that keeps us up to date on this important issue.
The Fine Words Butter No Parsnips team thanks you for your interest.
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Faire words butter noe parsnips.
~ John Clarke, 1639 (earliest known citation)
The trouble is of course, that aliens, as they say on Mars, butter no parsnips. Or anything else for that matter.
~ The Scotsman newspaper, reporting on UFO sightings in Scotland
With sober proletarian instinct he [the worker] insists on deeds in confirmation of words; he does not want his parsnips buttered with fine words.
~ Vladimir Lenin
Vietnamese people say, “Fine words butter no parsnips.” It is the same for us Muslims.
~ Person quoted in the newspaper Nhân Dân arguing that Vietnam needs more halal restaurants
The phrase “fine words butter no parsnips” can not be levelled at the Cornwall Agricultural Council.
~ Steve Parsons, chairman of the Cornwall Agricultural Council
But ideas — like fine words — butter no parsnips, and the Glasgow-based team is, in its second year of operation, undergoing the creatively painful process of narrowing its output down to the manufacturable projects that are likely to make money.
~ U.K. Science Park Association
Mathematics and physics are infinities, and butter no parsnips. In math there are no parsnips, no butter either.
~ Yale Review
The expression “fair (or fine) words butter no parsnips” dates back at least to the seventeenth century and certainly plain boiled parsnips cry out for butter. (Editor’s note, hundreds of words about parsnips deleted) I leave you with this snippet of trivia — in the Middle Ages, a raw parsnip round your neck was said to ward off adders or reduce swelling in the testicles.
~ Parish bulletin of St. Albans Church, Copenhagen
STEPHEN WESTCRAFT (contemptuously) All very well, but fine words butter no parsnips. (turns to go up R.)
MRS. PENFOLD and MISS MILBURN (laugh at WESTCRAFT) Ha, ha, ha!
~ Dialogue from the play “Black and White” by Wilkie Collins and Charles Fechter
The spirit does not dwell in concepts, but in deeds and in facts. Words butter no parsnips.
~ Carl Jung
Hearts in the right place alone butter no parsnips.
~ Newsletter of the National Housewives Register
Merely giving voice to aspirations will butter no parsnips.
~ Excerpt from a case-law report on Kulvinder Kaur v. MG Rover Group Ltd.
Rhetoric butters no parsnips.
~ “Establishing and Maintaining a Library,” University of Sydney essay
Such knowledge butters no parsnips.
~ The Economist, “Science Is a Celebration Of The Human Spirit”
Fair words butter no fish.
~ Variation dated to 1645
If you want to know how to express in German the thought that would normally prompt you to utter the axiom “Fine words butter no parsnips,” the entire phrase is there for you under the entry for parsnip.
~ Reader review of a German-English dictionary on Amazon.com
Last night the prime minister made a moving speech at the Shah Alam refugee camp, but fine words butter no parsnips.
~ Spoken at a symposium on the breakdown of civil society in Gujarat, India
From time to time, we all experience the frustration of not being able to get through on the telephone. However, overall national performance on all aspects of customer service is currently about 84 percent against a target of 79 percent. However, when individuals are not getting that service in response from the Banbury office, I realise that ministerial statistics butter no parsnips — they certainly butter no Banburys.
~ Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, London
In theory, [Tiger] Woods should be five points in the bag, but theory don't butter no parsnips.
~ Times of London sports page
The type of religion which sings “Oh to be nothing, Only to sit at His feet,” will “butter no parsnips” in our parish.
~ Rev. J. E. Thorp, “Whoso mocketh the poor reproacheth his Maker”
As Sir Christopher Staughton commented, a reserving policy itself “butters no parsnips.”
~ “Recent Developments in English Reinsurance Law”
Who was the blundering idiot who said that “fine words butter no parsnips?”
~ William Thackeray, “Vanity Fair”
But fine words butter no parsnips, as they say (no, they really do), so you’ll also find a complete “Webmaster’s Toolkit.”
~ Web page of “The Complete Idiot's Guide to Creating a Web Page”
After all, as the British saying goes: “Fine words butter no parsnips.” There’s a Chinese equivalent, and I do not want to deprive you of it: “If you are not going to lay an egg, then don’t make a noise like a chicken.” Thank you.
~ Closing words of a speech by Princess Margriet of the Netherlands