approximate proverbs

Tired of filigrees and having a dictionary at hand, I start (with my wife) rewriting proverbs, locutions and other maxims.

Better to be alone than badly accompanied
turns into
Better to be alone than unaccompanied

The clothes don't make the man
turns into
the magpie doesn't make the sparrow

I really like the color resulting from the use of a Payne's grey in watercolor on a pink dictionary page background.
There will be others, we are far from having finished reinterpreting the ancient maxims!