{npm22: 17~wake}

Welcome to the one day of the year when it’s safe to put all your eggs… in… Right, sorry. It won’t happen again.

Today’s proverb is very old indeed, though finding the actual date it first came into use seems impossible. The oldest sighting came from Giovanni Torriani’s 1666 piazza universale di proverbi Italiani a collection of some ten thousand Italian proverbs. Using one proverb to define another he says, ‘Venture not all in one bottom.’ ‘To put all ones Eggs in a Paniard, viz., to hazard all in one bottom.” (Here “bottom” is another name for a ship’s hold, while a pannier is what baskets strapped to donkeys and oxen were called.) Don Quixote used the phrase as we’re familiar with it (“‘Tis the part of wise man to keep himself today for tomorrow, and not venture all his eggs in one basket”) and though it was likely in use well before then, it wasn’t until 1894 that it was printed in America:

Behold, the fool saith, “Put not all thine eggs in the one basket” — which is but a manner of saying, “Scatter you money and your attention”; but the wise man saith, “Put all your eggs in the one basket and — watch that basket.” – Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson

I don’t know; I get that the proverb is trying to teach prudence, but what if we threw all the eggs into every effort? Sometimes holding back doesn’t get you want you want…