Let them eat…

Mary Anne was talking about eating cake the night before surgery. I noted that cake is the best medicine.

Which led me to think there could be a whole series of proverbs with “cake” substituted in, along the lines of the Star Warspants” meme (that linked-to Words & Stuff column is NSFW; the pants quotes are at the end of it).

So I came up with the following:

  • Cake is a dish best served cold.
  • Red cake at morning, sailors take warning; red cake at night, sailors delight.
  • A cat may look at a cake.
  • All cake comes to he (or she) who waits.
  • All that glisters is not cake.
  • An army marches on its cake.
  • You made your cake; now you have to lie in it.
  • Half a cake is better than none.
  • You can't make a cake without breaking a few eggs.
  • Cake is wasted on the young.
  • Misery loves cake.

Eric Z replied with a comment about “the boy who cried cake.”

And then Shmuel took the idea and ran with it:

  • It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of cake.
  • It was the best of cake, it was the worst of cake.
  • Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover cake.
  • They say when cake comes close ranks, and so the white people did.
  • There was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved cake.
  • He—for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it—was in the act of slicing at the cake which swung from the rafters.
  • Cake, light of my life, fire of my loins . . .

As Mary Anne noted, that last one may be hard to top.

However, I invite y'all to try, or at least to have fun with the idea. Take a well-known phrase, saying, or quotation, substitute in “cake” for one or more words, and post it as a comment here.

Okay to make slight alterations to make the grammar come out right, make it funnier, or otherwise improve the MFQ, but try to stick close to the original where possible.

13 Responses to “Let them eat…”

  1. Vardibidian

    I saw the best cakes of my generation destroyed by madness, frosting, baked, inedible…

    Thanks,
    -V.

    Obviously pronounced bakéd, the poetic way.

    reply
  2. Vardibidian

    Also–

    A fool and his cake are soon parted.
    Fortune favors the cake.
    A cake is as good as a rest.
    One good cake deserves another.
    A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single cake.
    Hard cakes make bad law.
    Home is where the cake is.
    Cake is the root of all evil.

    There ain’t no such thing as a free cake.

    Thanks,
    -V.

    reply
  3. jacob

    Cake will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no cake.

    People who live in glass houses should not throw cake.

    And, of course, the updated version of “Farmer in the Dell”, in which the rat takes the cake.

    reply
  4. Fran

    A good cake is hard to find.
    A woman’s place is in the cake.
    Fight cake with cake.
    Absence makes the cake grow fonder. (Or is it fondant?)

    reply
  5. Janet Lafler

    Ceci n’est pas un gateau.

    reply
  6. Michael

    Why is this cake different from all other cakes?
    Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed by Thy cake.
    All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my cake.
    My God, it’s full of cake!

    reply
  7. Jed

    Hee! Thanks, all! These made me laugh a bunch.

    reply
  8. Dan P

    Will no one rid me of this troublesome cake?

    reply
  9. David Moles

    ἀμόρα ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος…
    (Sing, goddess, of the cake of Peleus’ son Achilles…)

    Placenta est omnis divisa in partes tres…
    (All of the cake is divided into three parts…)

    In a hole in the ground there lived a cake.

    It is possible I already had some presentiment of my cake.

    The sky over the port was the color of cake.

    reply
  10. Jed

    Excellent!

    A few more:

    Where there’s smoke, there’s cake.

    A cake in the hand is worth two in the bush.

    The P, I should add for your guidance, is silent, as in psithis, psychic, and pcake.

    I do not like green cake and ham.

    Where is the cake? / There ought to be cake. / Well, maybe next year.

    She loves cake, yeah, yeah, yeah.

    All you need is cake.

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  11. David Moles

    (Jed, you seriously need to introduce some more anti-spam measures, even if it’s just Ben’s “I am a sentient entity” button.)

    If cake could speak, we would not understand it.

    Ceci n’est pas un gateau.

    The cake is a cake.

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  12. Jed

    The sad thing is, I do have anti-spam measures in place. This is the reduced spam version.

    On my main blog, the spam got so bad that I had to require sign-in, which got Mary Anne annoyed at me for being too restrictive.

    I’ve considered trying something like Ben’s button. I suppose I ought to. I’ll have to ask him whether it solves the problem.

    reply
  13. ziajameel

    good one.

    reply

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