20 Life Lessons from the 1900s Still Relevant Today

Don’t judge a book by its cover

This is one of the English language’s most famous metaphorical idioms. According to bloomsbury-international.com, the phrase first appeared in the Piqua Democrat in Piqua, Ohio: “Don’t judge a book by its cover, see a man by his cloth, as there is often a good deal of solid worth and superior skill underneath a jacket and yaller pants.” The phrase was probably well known to those in the early 20th century.