COMMON PROVERBS & SAYINGS - all times

PROVERBS

Adventure-by discipline, determination and dedication.

Freedom-through economic and political democracy.

Peace-with liberty, justice and dignity for all.

Eros like straws upon the surface flow, 
one who is in search of truth must dive below.

LIST OF COMMON ENGLISH PROVERBS & SAYINGS

·        A bad man is better than a bad name.

·        A bad workman quarrels with his tools.

·        A bird in hand is worth two in bush.

·        A burnt child dreads the fire.

·        A crowd is no company.

·        A drop in the ocean.

·        A figure among ciphers.

·        A fog cannot be dispelled by a fan.

·        A forced faith is hypocrisy hateful to god and men.

·        A friend in need is a friend indeed.

·        A good deed is never lost.

·        A honey tongue, a heart of gall.

·        A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

·        A nine-day's wonder.

·        A penny saved is a penny gained.

·        A room without books is a body without soul.

·        A rotten apple injures its companions.

·        A small leak will sink a great ship.

·        A straight stick is crooked in the water.

·        A wolf in lamb's clothing.

·        Action speaks louder than words.

·        Affection blinds reason.

·        All cruelty springs from the weakness.

·        All human activity is prompted by desire.

·        All life is an experiment.

·        All men are mortal.

·        All's well that ends well.

·        Ambition is in fact avarice of power.

·        An empty sack cannot stand upright.

·        An open purse tempts a saint.

·        Apparel makes the man.

·        As the king so are the subjects.

·        As you sow, so you reap.

·        Avarice is the root of all evils.

·        Avarice, ambitions, lust etc. Are species of madness?

·        Barking dogs seldom bite.

·        Be the enemy an ant, see him an elephant.

·        Beggars and borrowers could not be choosers.

·        Behind every successful man there is a woman.

·        Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.

·        Beneath the rose lies the serpent.

·        Better wear you shoes than your bed clothes.

·        Between two stools we come to the ground.

·        Birds of a feather flock together.

·        Black will take no other hue.

·        Blood is thicker than water.

·        Cattle do not from crow's cursing.

·        Change is the great enemy of revolution.

·        Charity begins at home.

·        Charity creates a multitude of sores.

·        Cleverness is not wisdom.

·        Coming events cast their shadows before.

·        Content is more than a kingdom.

·        Contentment is happiness.

·        Create fish eat up the small.

·        Creditors have better memory than debtors.

·        Crows are never the whiter for washing.

·        Crying in wilderness.

·        Custom is the principal magistrate of man's life.

·        Custom, then, is the great guide to human life.

·        Cut not the branch on which you sit.

·        Cut your coat according to your cloth.

·        Debt is a bottomless sea.

·        Deep rivers move with silent majesty, shallow brooks are noisy.

·        Desire is the very essence of man.

·        Diamonds cut diamonds.

·        Difficulty is a severe instructor.

·        Do evil and look for like?

·        Do good and cast it into the river.

·        Drowning man catches at straw.

·        Earthen pot must be keep clean of the brass kettle.

·        East or west, home is best.

·        Easy got, easy spent.

·        Eat to live don't live to eat.

·        Empty vessels make the greatest noise.

·        Empty vessel sounds much.

·        Even death cannot be had for the asking.

·        Every day should be passed as if it were to be our last.

·        Every man has a right to work or to bread.

·        Every man meets his Waterloo at last.

·        Every pleasure has a pain.

·        Every potter praises his pot.

·        Everything looks yellow to a jaundiced eye.

·        Evil eye can see no good.

·        Evil got, evil spent.

·        Example is better than precept.

·        Excess is very bad.

·        Exuberance is beauty.

·        Fame is proof that people are gullible.

·        Fear is the mother of morality.

·        Fear of ideas makes an imprudent an ineffective.

·        Fine words ill deeds.

·        Fool to others, to himself a sage.

·        For the truth there is no deadline.

·        Forced labor is better than idleness.

·        Forewarned is forearmed.

·        Fortune favors the brave.

·        Freedom cannot live where there is injustice.

·        Friends are thieves of times.

·        Gather thistles and expect pickles.

·        God's will be done.

·        Good health is above wealth.

·        Good marksmen may miss.

·        Good mind, good find.

·        Great armaments lead inevitably to war.

·        Great cry little wool.

·        Greater the difficulty, greater the glory.

·        Guilty conscience is always suspicious.

·        Habits are not resisted, soon becomes necessity.

·        Half a loaf is better than no bread.

·        Hard nut to crack.

·        Haste makes waste.

·        Hasty climbers have sudden falls.

·        He breaks his wife's head and then buys a plaster for it.

·        He jests at scars that never felt a wound.

·        He that, is warm, thinks all are so.

·        He who knows how to be poor knows everything.

·        He who moves not forward goes backward.

·        He who would catch fish must not mind getting wet.

·        Hearing wisdom, speaking repentance.

·        High thinking, plain leaving.

·        High winds blow on high hills.

·        His wits are gone woolgathering.

·        Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

·        Hope is a walking dream.

·        Human misery is too great for men to do without faith.

·        Hurry will bury you.

·        If compromise continues the revolution disappears.

·        If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

·        If you want a thing well done, do it yourself.

·        If you wish to know a man, place him in authority.

·        Ill got, ill spent.

·        Ill gotten goods seldom prosper.

·        Important principle may and must be flexible.

·        In a really just cause the weak conquers the strong.

·        Innocent has nothing to fear.

·        It is art that makes life, makes interest, and makes importance.

·        It is easy to be wise after the event.

·        It is hard to live in Rome and to fight with the pope.

·        It is man's mission to learn to understand.

·        It is no use crying over split milk.

·        It is not work that kills, but worry.

·        It is too late to lock the stable-door when the steed is stolen.

·        It is work that makes a workman.

·        It takes two to make a quarrel.

·        It's not how long, but how well we live.

·        Jack of all trades fit for nothing.

·        Justice is truth in action.

·        Killing two birds with one stone.

·        Knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

·        Least said soonest mended.

·        Let bygones be bygones.

·        Let the past bury the dead.

·        Like curves like.

·        Like draws like.

·        Like father like son.

·        Living from hand to mouth.

·        Make hay while the sun shines.

·        Make not gate wider than the city.

·        Man proposes God disposes.

·        Many a little make a fickle.

·        Many a slip between the cup and the lip

·        Many dishes make many diseases.

·        Many men, many minds.

·        Master of himself will be master of others.

·        Measure for measure.

·        Men always lost half of what is gained by violence.

·        Men worship the rising sun.

·        Might is right.

·        Misfortunes never come singly.

·        Money begets money.
.   Much ado about nothing.
.   Much cry and little wool.

·        Nature admits no lie.

·        Necessity is the mother of invention.

·        Never take anything for granted.

·        Never trust the advice of the man in difficulties.

·        No one knows the weight of another's burden.

·        No pains, no gains.

·        No wisdom like silence.

·        None but the brave discovers the fair.

·        Not heaven itself upon the past has power.

·        Nothing great is every achieved without enthusiasm.

·        Nothing is easy to unwilling.

·        One flower makes no garland.

·        One today is better than two tomorrows.

·        One word is enough to wise.

·        One-nail drives out another.

·        Out of the frying pan into the fire.

·        Penny and penny make many.

·        Penny-wise pound-foolish.

·        Poverty breeds strife.

·        Poverty is the mother of crime.

·        Practice makes a man perfect.

·        Progress is the law of life.

·        Pure gold does not fear the flame.

·        Quit not certainty for hope.

·        Respect yourself and you will be respected.

·        Rich man's joke is always funny.

·        Riches have wings.

·        Rome was not built in a day.

·        Sanely applied advertising could remake the world.

·        Science is organized knowledge.

·        Self-praise is no recommendation.

·        Set your sail as the wind blows.

·        Something is better than nothing.

·        Steal a goose and give giblets in alms.

·        Step by step the ladder is ascended.

·        Strike the iron while it is hot.

·        The dogs bark, but the caravan passes.

·        The early bird catches the worm.

·        The first duty of man is subduing fear.

·        The folly of one man is the fortune of another.

·        The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.

·        The goal of all life is death.

·        The great artist is the simplifier.

·        The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.

·        The innocent have nothing to fear.

·        The lust of fame is the lust that a wise man shakes off.

·        The natural role of a twentieth century man is anxiety.

·        The pen is mightier than sword.

·        The slum is the measure of civilization.

·        The wearer best knows where the shoe pinches.

·        The worth of a thing is known by want of it.

·        There is no sin except stupidity.

·        There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.

·        Thing do not change, we change.

·        Tit for tat.

·        To cast pearls before swine.

·        To count one's chickens before they are hatched.

·        To kill two birds with one stone.

·        To lock the stable-door when the steed is stolen.

·        To make (to turn) the air blue.

·        To make a mountain out of a molehill.

·        To make castles in the air.

·        To make the cup run over.

·        To measure another man's foot by one's own last.

·        To measure other people's corn by one's own bushel.

·        To pay one back in one's own coin.

·        To plough the sand.

·        To pour water into a sieve.

·        To pull the chestnuts out of the fire for somebody.

·        To pull the devil by the tail.

·        To put (set) the cart before the horse.

·        To put a spoke in somebody's wheel.

·        To put off till Doomsday.

·        To rob one's belly to cover one's back.

·        To rob peter to pay Paul.

·        To roll in money.

·        To run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.

·        To save one's bacon.

·        To send (carry) owls to Athens.

·        To set the wolf to keep the sheep.

·        To stick to somebody like a leech.

·        To strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.

·        To take counsel of one's pillow.

·        To take the bull by the horns.

·        To teach the dog to bark.

·        To tell tales out of school.

·        To throw a stone in one's own garden.

·        To throw dust in somebody's eyes.

·        To throw straws against the wind.

·        To treat somebody with a dose of his own medicine.

·        To use a steam-hammer to crack nuts.

·        To wash one's dirty linen in public.

·        To wear one's heart upon one's sleeve.

·        To weep over an onion.

·        To work with the left hand.

·        Tomorrow come never.

·        Too many cooks spoil the broth.

·        Too much courtesy, too much craft.

·        Too much knowledge makes the head bald.

·        Too much of a good thing is good for nothing.

·        Too much water drowned the miller.

·        Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.

·        True blue will never stain.

·        True coral needs no painter's brush.

·        Truth comes out of the mouths of babes and suckling.

·        Truth is stranger than fiction.

·        Truth lies at the bottom of a well.

·        Two blacks do not make a white.

·        Two heads are better than one.

·        Two is company, but three is none.

·        Union is strength.

·        Velvet paws hide sharp claws.

·        Virtue is its own reward.

·        Vows made in storm are forgotten in calm.

·        Wait for the cat to jump.

·        Walls have ears and hedges have eyes.

·        Wash your dirty linen at home.

·        Waste not, want not.

·        We cannot command nature except by obeying her.

·        We know a man by the company he keeps.

·        We know not what is good until we have lost it.

·        We never know the value of water till the well is dry.

·        We shall see what we shall see.

·        We soon believe what we desire.

·        Wealth is nothing without health.

·        Well begun is half done.

·        Well taken are well spoken.

·        What can't be cured must be endured.

·        What governs men is fear of truth.

·        What is bred in the bone will not go out of the flesh.

·        What is done by night appears by day.

·        What is done cannot be undone.

·        What is gained by argument is gained forever.

·        What is got over the devil's back is spent under his belly.

·        What is lost is lost.

·        What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

·        What is worth doing at alt is worth doing well.

·        What must be must be.

·        What the heart thinks the tongue speaks.

·        What we do willingly is easy.

·        When angry, count a hundred.

·        When at Rome, do as the Romans do.

·        When children stand quiet, they have done some harm.

·        When flatterers meet, the devil goes to dinner.

·        When guns speak it is too late to argue.

·        When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.

·        When money speaks the truth is silent.

·        When pigs fly.

·        When Queen Anne was alive.

·        When the cat is away, the mice will play.

·        When the devil is blind.

·        When the fox preaches, take care of your geese.

·        When the pinch comes, you remember the old shoe.

·        When three know it, alt knows it.

·        When wine is in wit is out.

·        Where apathy is the master, all men are slaves.

·        Where law ends, tyranny begins.

·        Where there is a will there is a way.

·        Where there is fear, there is no religion.

·        While the grass grows the horse starves.

·        While there is life there is hope.

·        Whistling maid and crowning hen are neither fit for gods or men.

·        Who breaks pays.

·        Who goes a borrowing, goes a sorrowing.

·        Who has never tasted bitter, knows not what is sweet.

·        Who keeps company with the wolf, will learn to howl.

·        Who knows most speaks least.

·        Will is wish, and liberty is power.

·        Willful waste makes woeful want.

·        Wise after the event.

·        With time and patience the leaf of the mulberry becomes satin.

·        Words pay no debts.

·        X-ray yourself.

·        Yesterday will not be called again.

·        You can take a horse to the water but you cannot make him drink.

·        You cannot eat your cake and have it.

·        You cannot flay the same ox twice.

·        You cannot judge a tree by it bark.

·        You cannot teach old dogs new tricks.

·        You cannot wash charcoal white.

·        You made your bed, now lie in it.

·        Zeal without knowledge is a runaway horse.

***

K S

July, 2001