All that glitters is not gold facts for kids
"All that glitters is not gold" is an aphorism stating that not everything that looks precious or true turns out to be so.
While early expressions of the idea are known from at least the 12th–13th century, the current saying is derived from a 16th-century line by William Shakespeare, "All that glisters is not gold".
Origins
The expression, in various forms, originated in or before the 12th century and may date back to Æsop. The Latin is Non omne quod nitet aurum est. The French monk Alain de Lille wrote "Do not hold everything gold that shines like gold" in 1175.
Chaucer gave two early versions in English: "But al thyng which that shyneth as the gold / Nis nat gold, as that I have herd it told" in "The Canon's Yeoman's Tale", and "Hyt is not al golde that glareth" in "The House of Fame".
The popular form of the expression is a derivative of a line in William Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice, which employs the word "glisters," a 16th-century synonym for "glitters." The line comes from a secondary plot of the play, in the scroll inside the golden casket the puzzle of Portia's boxes (Act II – Scene VII – Prince of Morocco):
All that glisters is not gold—
Often have you heard that told.
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold.
Gilded tombs do worms enfold.
Had you been as wise as bold,
Young in limbs, in judgment old,
Your answer had not been inscrolled
Fare you well. Your suit is cold—
Glitters or glisters
The original version of the saying used the word glisters, though it is often taken as the similar and synonymous glitters. The poet John Dryden used glitter in his 1687 poem The Hind and the Panther.
Arthur Golding, in his 1577 English translation of John Calvin's sermons on the Epistle to the Ephesians, used the phrase "But al is not gold that glistereth" in sermon 15.
In 1747, Thomas Gray paraphrased the saying in his Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes which finishes with the lines:
Not all that tempts your wandering eyes
And heedless hearts, is lawful prize;
Nor all that glisters, gold".
See also
In Spanish: No es oro todo lo que reluce para niños
- "Gods of the Copybook Headings" – a poem reflecting on eternal truths amid human pretensions, by Rudyard Kipling
- "Things are seldom what they seem" – song in Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore, where Little Buttercup alludes to Captain Corcoran's low birth by singing of things that may appear as one thing whilst being another, including the line "All that glitters is not gold".
- "Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes" – poem by Thomas Gray which ends "Nor all, that glisters, gold"
