Why do we say "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar"?

Meaning:

People will respond better to you if you are polite than if you are rude.

Background:

According to The Random House Dictionary of America's Popular Proverbs and Sayings Benjamin Franklin recorded this expression in Poor Richard's Almanac in 1744, but its first recorded use is in Common Place of Italian Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, collected by G. Torriano and published in 1666. We were unable to find any information on G. Torriano but did glean that his collection is the earliest known reference to another popular expression: The proof of the pudding is in the eating

Commonplace books became very popular during the Renaissance, used as a kind of intellectual filing system, whereby one collected poems, proverbs, quotes, and other material around a particular subject or theme. Over time, the idea expanded to encompass a more modern combination of a scrapbook and a diary filled with sketches, photographs, articles, mementos, even mathematical equations. For more on commonplace books see our "beyond the book" article to Why We Broke Up.

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