Dear People:
Via Balzac & some other French references I've come across the proverbial-sounding phrase
"Mieux vaut une tete bien faite, plutot qu'une tete bien pleine".
I know i'm missing accents here -- but what I'm really missing is the crucial sense, the French deep-culture sense of this sentence.
So this means, kind of, sort of: "better a well structured head than a full head" -- or what? Key phrsaes are "tete bien faite" & "tete bien pleine"?
This is a reference to order & disorder of some kind?
Is there a valid, well-targeted, English-language translation (or equivalent proverb?) which anyone knows of or would be so kind as to suggest?
Thank you ahead of time for whatever input you may have.
Yours gratefully: -- Keith Lyons
Via Balzac & some other French references I've come across the proverbial-sounding phrase
"Mieux vaut une tete bien faite, plutot qu'une tete bien pleine".
I know i'm missing accents here -- but what I'm really missing is the crucial sense, the French deep-culture sense of this sentence.
So this means, kind of, sort of: "better a well structured head than a full head" -- or what? Key phrsaes are "tete bien faite" & "tete bien pleine"?
This is a reference to order & disorder of some kind?
Is there a valid, well-targeted, English-language translation (or equivalent proverb?) which anyone knows of or would be so kind as to suggest?
Thank you ahead of time for whatever input you may have.
Yours gratefully: -- Keith Lyons