Meaning & Analysis
Longstanding friendships, like aged wine, improve and become more valuable or enjoyable over time.
Insights
Enduring Value
Suggests that true friendship deepens with age and experience, much like wine that matures and gains complexity, indicating that time strengthens bonds.
Reliability and Trust
Old friends are more dependable and trustworthy, having proven their loyalty and constancy over time, just as aged wine reliably offers quality and flavor.
Nostalgia and Comfort
Old friendships, like vintage wine, evoke feelings of warmth, familiarity, and comfort, providing emotional sustenance beyond novelty.
Historical and Literary Tradition
The comparison of friendship to aged wine appears frequently in Renaissance literature and proverbs, reflecting a widespread cultural metaphor that values longevity and maturation in social bonds.
Cross-Cultural Endurance
Variants of this proverb exist globally, underscoring a universal human appreciation for the deepening of relationships over time and the suspicion of new, untested connections.
Psychological Resonance
Modern psychology supports the idea that long-term friendships contribute to well-being, providing stability, shared history, and emotional depth that new relationships cannot immediately offer.
Rhetorical Devices
Simile
Compares old friends to old wine, a vivid metaphor that evokes sensory and emotional richness associated with maturation.
Parallelism
Pairs 'old friends' with 'old wine' to create a balanced and rhythmic phrase, enhancing memorability and rhetorical effect.
Alliteration
The repetition of the 'o' sound in 'old' and 'friends' and 'old' and 'wine' creates a pleasing auditory effect that aids recall.
Transcription
Quotations
For you must consider, true friends are not like new garments, which will be the worse for wearing: they are rather . . . like many wines, which the older they are the better they are.
Ah well I wotte that . . . a new garment maketh thee leaue off the olde thoughe it be fitter, and newe wine causeth thee to forsake the olde though it be better.
Three thinges the elder they be, the more delight we take in them.
Old wine to drinke. Old bookes to read in. Old friends to be conuersant withall.
Knowest thou not that olde wine is best?
Old wine and old friends, are praised euery where.
Is not old wine wholesommest, olde Pippines toothsommest, old wood burne brightest, old Linnen wash whitest, old souldiars Sweet-hart are surest, and olde louers are soundest.
The praise of old wine, friends, and gold, is in all places often told.
Old Wine, and old Friends are loved over all.
Old wine and old friends be praised every where.
Old wine and an old friend are good provisions.
Friendship is like wine, the elder the better, the longer it lasteth, the more it is to be praised.
Gold, a friend, and wine, the older the better.
Old wine, and an old friend.
Wine, a friend, and cheese, must be old.
To be good.
*Gall. and old gold.
Shakespeare Citations
Is your gold and silver ewes and rams?
Cross References
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.