井底之蛙: why frogs do not fly

Once they asked a frog who lived at the bottom of a well, ‘Would you like to fly in the sky?’

‘Why the crap would I want to do that?’ quoth the amphibian. ‘Your sky is the size of a handkerchief!’

The Chinese expression 井底之蛙 – jǐng dǐ zhī wā, “frog at the bottom of a well” – condensed from a folk tale, in Japanese is 井底の蛙(せいていのかわず).  Denoting “a person of limited knowledge and experience”, it additionally transpires a tinge of militant ignorance: “I don’t know and I don’t care to know!”

“In the sky full of people, only some want to fly, isn’t that crazy?”


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