Grammar structure of "seeing is believing"

[Tom]

Hi

I understand the meaning if the saying Seeing is believing , but what I do not understand is its sentence structure. I mean, which part of speech is believing ?

Why not "Seeing is believed"?

Could you please give me a few examples like the sentence "Seeing is believing "?

Tom

[Mr. Micawber]

.
Well, seeing is a gerund, and since believing is the complement in a copular sentence, believing must be either a noun, adjective, or adverb. I would suppose they are both gerunds. The proverb means:

Seeing is [the same as] believing, or Seeing = Believing.

Are there others? Not any I can think of offhand, but there are a number of these pithy sayings, similar in that they balance parts of speech (verb-verb, noun-noun, preposition-preposition,etc)-- such as:

Forewarned is forearmed.
Well begun is half done.
Once bitten, twice shy.
Let bygones be bygones.
Easier said than done.
Like father, like son.
Handsome is as handsome does.
A miss is as good as a mile.
Time is money.
Honesty is the best policy.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Etc.
.

Mister Micawber
http://ca.geocities.com/Mister_Micawber

[Yankee]

Hi Tom

As I see it, both "-ing words" in "Seeing is believing" are gerunds, so in that sense, you could say that "Today is Sunday" is a similar structure.

Or you could look at the "Seeing is believing" structure as simply meaning "Doing this is the same as doing that."

Here are some similarly balanced short sentences:

"To see is to believe"
-- or --
"To know her is to love her".
-- or --
"Opening a spam attachment is asking for trouble."

Amy