The article participates on the discussion how reproducible language units, in this case proverbs and proverbial sentences, could be detected in a corpus of speech in written form. The study confirms that proverbs remain a part of contem-porary Finnish communication and everyday language, although the context of use has changed over the period which Finnish proverbs have been collected (i.e. over two centuries). Most traditional proverbs still contain agrarian terms and are rela-tively permanent expressions, but nowadays they are often used in a new context and with a new meaning. The corpus in question consists about 70,000 unedited text-messages sent to be published as short letters to the editor and aimed at the readers of the daily Finnish regional newspaper. These messages include more than 7000 expressions that are connected with proverbs. Although the paper examines Finnish proverbs and uses Finnish examples, many of the processes and challenges are the same, no matter which language or culture is being examined.