Proverbs are brief, memorable, and intuitively convincing formulations of socially sanctioned advice.  Virtually all cultures possess a repertoire of such formulations grounded in accumulated experience. Why has the quintessentially oral genre of proverbs remained popular in literate and even postliterate societies?  By bridging current gaps between literary and folklore studies and between rhetorical theory and cognitive science, we attribute the staying power of proverbs in individual minds and social circulation to such prosodic, grammatical, and semantic features of memorability as alliteration and rhyme, childlike repetitive syntax, and analogical troping across different conceptual domains. We also note that by lending communal approval to individual dispositions toward recurrent situations, proverbs help to allay any sense of guilt, shame, or regret that humans often experience as a result of their facing a bewildering plurality of behavioral options. [P.H. and F.S.]