Ikigai Daily
Menu
DriveProverb

A single bracelet does not jingle.

Proverb attributed to the Congo

Philosophy

The story behind the card

The proverb is usually labelled Congolese, though the books that cite it do not say which of the region's many languages it comes from; Charlotte and Wolf Leslau's collection African Proverbs (1962) lists it with no origin. The image is simple: one bangle on a wrist makes no sound, and the jingle comes only when it meets another. It is a saying about working together. American books on Kwanzaa, the African-American festival held from 26 December to 1 January, use it to illustrate umoja, Swahili for unity.

Türkçe oku
Tek bilezik şıngırdamaz.
Kongo'ya atfedilen atasözü

Söz genellikle Kongo atasözü olarak bilinir; ama onu anan kitaplar, bölgede konuşulan pek çok dilden hangisine ait olduğunu söylemez. Charlotte ve Wolf Leslau'nun African Proverbs (1962) derlemesi ise onu yer adı vermeden aktarır. İmge yalındır: Bilekteki tek bilezik ses çıkarmaz; şıngırtı ancak bir başkasına değince duyulur. Söz, el birliğinin gücünü anlatır. Kwanzaa, Afrika kökenli Amerikalıların 26 Aralık ile 1 Ocak arasında kutladığı bir bayramdır; bu bayramla ilgili kitaplar sözü, Svahilice “birlik” anlamındaki umoja ilkesini anlatmak için kullanır. Türkçede de “Bir elin nesi var, iki elin sesi var” denir.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Proverb
Get the mobile appAbout our cards

Related cards

These cards share a subject or reading mode with the card above.

DrivePhilosophy

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

The saying comes from chapter 64 of the Tao Te Ching, the classic of Taoist philosophy traditionally credited to the sage Laozi; its oldest surviving copies date from around 300 BC. Literally, a journey of a thousand li begins beneath your feet; the li is a Chinese measure of distance, today half a kilometre. The same chapter notes that a tree too thick to hug grows from a tiny shoot: great things start small, and are best dealt with while they are still small.

Chinese, Daoist ProverbRead card
DrivePhilosophy

The tongue has no bones, but it can break hearts.

The older form of this proverb says the tongue has no bones, yet it breaks bones: words can hurt as much as blows. An Italian-English dictionary of 1760 gives it as “La lingua non ha osso, e osso fa rompere”; Greek has it too, and the Ottoman statesman and scholar Ahmed Vefik Pasha recorded “Dilin kemiği yok, kemiği kırar” in his 19th-century collection of Turkish proverbs. Swahili says simply “Ulimi hauna mfupa”, the tongue has no bone. The ending about hearts seems to be a later English variant.

Persian, Turkish, Arabic variants ProverbRead card
DrivePhilosophy

He who has health has hope, and he who has hope has everything.

English quotation books have called this an “Arabian proverb” since at least the 1860s; Tryon Edwards's A Dictionary of Thoughts (1891) is one, but these books give no Arabic original, so the label is best taken loosely. The idea is widely shared: good health gives people the strength to plan and to recover from setbacks. Turkish says “Her şeyin başı sağlık”, health comes first, and when a glass breaks people say “Sağlık olsun”: never mind, as long as everyone is well.

Spanish, Arabic variants ProverbRead card
DrivePhilosophy

Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.

The pairing is usually called a Japanese proverb, but no Japanese original has been found. It appears in English-language business books from the mid-1990s; “vision” here means a clear idea of where you want to get to. An older saying on the same theme was already in church papers in the 1920s: “A vision without a task is but a dream; a task without a vision is drudgery.” It is often said to come from an 18th-century English church inscription, but that is unconfirmed too.

Anonymous saying; widely circulated as a Japanese proverb, with no specific Japanese source identifiedRead card
DrivePhilosophy

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and you feed him for life.

Often called an ancient Chinese proverb, the saying has no known Chinese source. Its earliest known version is in Mrs Dymond (1885), a novel by Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie, daughter of the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray: give a man a fish and he is hungry again in an hour; teach him to catch one and you do him a good turn. “Feed him for a lifetime” appears by 1961. The idea is older: the 12th-century Jewish scholar Maimonides ranked highest the help that lets a poor person support himself.

Chinese, widely attributed ProverbRead card
Next card in the archiveVision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.Read next →