The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs (453 page)

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rain

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It never RAINS but it pours

An archaic use of
but
to introduce an inevitable accompanying circumstance.

1726
(
title
)
It cannot rain but it pours.
1771
Letter
2 Feb. (1971) III. 1164
It never rains, but it pours, my dear Doctor … Mr. Br: has added to his Mastership .. a living hard by Cambridge.
1857
Barchester Towers
III. xii.
A wife with a large fortune too. It never rains but it pours, does it, Mr. Thorne?
1979
Reported Missing
vii.
I listened to the radio. Ben Gurion had suffered a stroke… It never rains but it pours.
1996
Washington Times
6 June A16
Here's a homey adage for Bill Clinton, who claims a fondness for them: It never rains but it pours.

misfortune

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It is easier to RAISE the Devil than to lay him

1655
Church Hist. Britain
x. iv.
The Boy having gotten a habit of counterfeiting .. would not be undeviled by all their Exorcisms, so that the Priests raised up a Spirit which they could not allay.
1725
tr.
Erasmus' Colloquies
202
‘Tis an old Saying and a true, ’Tis an easier Matter to raise the Devil, than 'tis to lay him.
1845
Works
(1898) XII. 136
Did you think, when, to serve your turn, you called the Devil up, that it was as easy to lay him as to raise him?
1890
Miner's Right
II. viii.
Exorcists of all lands .. have ever found the fiend more easy to invoke than to lay.

good and evil
;
prudence

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ransom

see
a PECK of March dust is worth a king's ransom
.

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