"The mouth of the world is only full of dirt"

Romanian Proverbs from a translation exercise in Grigore Nandris' Colloquial Rumanian (Routledge, 1945): 

Unde nu e cap, vai de picioare. - Where there is no head, woe to the feet.

După război mulți viteji se găsesc. - After the war, many heroes are found. 

Corb la corb nu scoate ochii. - A raven does not take out the eyes of another raven. 

Cine se face oaîe, îl mănâncă lupii.  - Who make themselves sheep, make a feast for the wolves.  

  The Romanians don’t pussyfoot around with their proverbs. 

 Fă-te tovarăș cu dracu, până treci cu el lacu.  - Make friends with the devil until you’ve crossed the lake.  

Get on solid ground before you antagonize the prince of darkness.  Wisdom that could not be more timely.  (And note the echoes from pop culture in the term for the devil, which in its definite form is "dracul").  

You can’t help but think about gothic things when reading these words of folk wisdom from the edge of Europe from a book that was already creaky when I made my debut on the planet.  Of course I can literally translate but probably only actually "get" about half of them, and even the ones I get, I can't be positive I've gotten as there is no key to the exercise in the back of the book.

Here’s an example of the difficulty I’m having:  The second proverb in the list is: "Gura lumii, numai pământul o astupa" which means literally (roughly) "The mouth of the world is only full of dirt."  Sounds nice I guess, but what the hell does it mean?  Because of the way the book is organized-- 6 independent sections for 6 general topics of language instead of a series of integrated lessons imparting increasing proficiency-- there is no “lesson vocabulary,” just a vocabulary section in the back of the book; and it says "Gura" is mouth and "lume" is world.  Consultation with the grammar section confirms that it’s in the genitive and it’s definite so it means "the world’s mouth".  Is it some arcane reference to hell that reverberated with Romanians of the early 20th century and before but is lost on a 21st century American atheist’s ear?  

So I Google translated it and Google tells me "Gura lumii", Mouth of the World, is an idiomatic equivalent of the English expression, Word of Mouth.  Oh!  Ok that makes sense.  In this case, the force of the wit is lost in translation, but the gist is clear: Information that comes from the street is going to be covered in grime.  Once again, a timely quote given the weight the chief executive places on things he “hears”.   

It’s the sort of thing that I would never have been able to deal with on my own before the advent of the iPhone.  That’s probably the difference that could account for why Hungarian which I picked up 3 years ago from another out-of-print Routledge book kind of "stuck" in contrast to the languages I struggled with before the internet, and why I’m so far happily sticking with Romanian.  (Granted, Google Translate, amazing as it is, is not yet perfect and there’s still plenty of stuff that leaves me scratching my head, but the nuggets are plentiful enough at this juncture to keep me at it.)