A week ago we wrote about the ten phrases your grandmother said that were secretly brilliant life advice. Then the comments started coming in, and the comments were better than the article.

Hundreds of you wrote back with the phrase your own grandmother used. The thing she said when you were sad. The warning she gave you about boys. The line she pulled out at exactly the right moment, every time, for forty years.

We read all of them. We cried at some. Here are ten more, sent in by you, with the names of the readers who shared them. Your grandmother is in here somewhere.

1. "Don't let your face freeze like that. You have such a pretty smile to share."

From Denise.

Her Nanna said this whenever Denise was sulking. Not the standard mock-warning that your face would actually freeze. Something gentler. Denise told us she's 69 now and still hears it, and that she still misses her Nanna, and that she catches herself saying it to her own grandchildren.

There's a small lesson hiding in this one that the standard "your face will freeze like that" version doesn't have. The standard version is a threat. Denise's grandmother's version is a reminder that you have something worth sharing, and that hiding it serves no one. Same words, almost. Completely different message.

2. "Always wear clean underwear in case you get in an accident."

A reader named Margaret sent this one, and so did about forty other people, which tells you something about how universal it was.

The logic of the phrase fell apart if you thought about it for ten seconds. If you got in a serious accident, the underwear was probably not going to remain clean, and the doctors had presumably seen worse. But the phrase was not really about underwear. It was about being ready to be seen at any moment by people you didn't know, which is a piece of advice that applies to many things beyond hospital visits.

Margaret says she still has clean underwear in a small bag in her glove compartment. Just in case.

3. "Eat your crusts. It'll put hair on your chest."

From Tom, whose grandmother said this only to the boys, and who reports that the strategy may have actually worked, because his beard came in at fifteen and he's blamed bread crusts ever since.

The phrase is gendered in a way that wouldn't fly today, and the science is bad. But there was something in the trick of telling a child that an undesirable food would produce a slightly exciting masculine outcome. The boys ate the crusts. The girls did too, sometimes, depending on what they wanted.

4. "Cold hands, warm heart."

From Linda. Her grandmother said this whenever Linda came in from outside complaining about her freezing fingers, and held her hands between her own warm ones until they thawed.

The line is half a folk saying and half a small reassurance. The science behind it is shaky. The emotional logic is sound. A grandmother who tells you that your cold hands are evidence of a warm heart is doing something more important than reporting circulation patterns.

5. "The good Lord willing and the creek don't rise."

From William in Tennessee, and from several other readers across the South.

The phrase was used in response to anything a person planned to do in the future. We'll see you Sunday for dinner. The good Lord willing and the creek don't rise. It was not pessimism, exactly. It was an acknowledgment that the future contains weather and accidents and forces beyond anyone's control, and that you should not make promises as if those things were not real.

William's grandmother used it about everything from church to a trip to the grocery store. He uses it now himself, sometimes, with his own children, who give him the same blank look he used to give her.

6. "Don't air your dirty laundry in public."

From Sandra. Her grandmother said this whenever Sandra started telling somebody outside the family about a problem inside the family.

The phrase was a stricter version of "mind your own business," and it ran in the other direction. Other people's business was not yours. But your business was also not other people's, and a lot of family trouble got worse, not better, when the trouble was discussed with neighbors, coworkers, or anyone else who didn't need to know.

Modern American life has mostly forgotten this. Sandra says her grandmother would have been horrified by social media. We agree.

7. "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride."

From Rebecca, whose grandmother used the phrase whenever Rebecca said the words "I wish" in any sentence at all.

I wish I had a bike. I wish I could go to camp this summer. I wish we lived in a bigger house. The grandmother's response, every time: If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. The message landed without being explained. Wishing was not a plan. Wishing did not produce horses, or bikes, or bigger houses. You either made the thing happen or you stopped wishing.

Rebecca says she still catches herself before saying "I wish." Her grandmother is doing the work from beyond the grave.

8. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

From Ellen. Her grandmother said this whenever Ellen got anxious about a problem that was still several weeks away.

This is essentially the same advice as the original list's "don't borrow trouble," but it carries an extra piece of wisdom. It assumes you will, in fact, come to the bridge. The problem is real, it will arrive, it will need to be dealt with. But you cannot deal with it from here. You deal with it when you get there, with the resources you have at that moment, not the resources you have today.

Ellen says her grandmother had a way of making this sound like a promise rather than a dismissal. You will get to the bridge. You will figure it out then. Until then, this hour does not belong to that problem.

9. "Save it for a rainy day."

From John. Said about money, and about everything else.

The literal use was financial. Don't spend the bonus, don't blow the birthday check, don't eat the last cookie. Put it aside. The rainy day will come.

The figurative use, John reports, was broader. His grandmother applied it to compliments (don't use them all up at once), to favors (don't ask for everything you might need today), and to good clothes (don't wear the nice dress to the grocery store).

The principle underneath is the same: that the future deserves resources, and that this moment is not allowed to consume everything.

10. "An apple a day keeps the doctor away."

From Patricia. She heard it every morning of her childhood, and an actual apple was usually involved.

The medical claim is overstated. An apple does not have superpowers. But the broader rule — that small daily habits add up to large lifetime outcomes — was correct, and it was being snuck into a child's morning routine via a small lie about fruit.

Patricia eats an apple every day now, at age 72. She has not been to the doctor for anything serious in fifteen years. Her grandmother is winning this argument from the grave.

---

There were hundreds more we couldn't fit. Phrases that were too regional to translate. Phrases that were too long. Phrases that have a story behind them too specific to share. Phrases that were so specific to one grandmother that they wouldn't make sense to anyone else.

If yours wasn't in the original ten, or in these ten, send it in. We'll keep collecting them. There may be a third article in this someday, and it will be made entirely of yours.

Somewhere, right now, a grandmother is saying one of these for the first time to a child who won't understand it for thirty years. The phrases will outlast all of us.