I have enjoyed learning the context and original meaning behind many of these aphorisms and words of wisdom, and that is the true utility of learning them, so that you can subvert them and invert them. Cultural touchstones have value because of shared context. The specific utility and applicability of wisdom varies because conversation is context specific and outcome dependent based on the adversarial vs collaborative nature of the dialogue.
Rarely is it collaborative and the onus is on the learner to understand the benefit with no context into the importance or relevance of the information. My point is that the value is lost frequently because of human behavior.
