Proverbs: quotes, facts and reflections

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Fall seven times, stand up eight.

In Japanese it is nana korobi ya oki (七転び八起き), literally “seven falls, eight risings”. In Japan the saying is linked with the Daruma doll, which portrays Bodhidharma, the monk traditionally credited with bringing Zen Buddhism to China. The doll is round and weighted at the bottom, so it rights itself whenever it is knocked over. Many people paint in one of its eyes when they set themselves a goal, and the other when they reach it. English says “If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.”

Japanese ProverbRead card

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When the winds of change blow, some build walls, others build windmills.

The line is widely shared as an ancient Chinese proverb, but no Chinese source for it has been found. The picture works without a source: a wall keeps the wind out, while a windmill catches it and turns its force into work, such as grinding grain or pumping water. The same change can be resisted or put to use. In English, “wind of change” is remembered from Harold Macmillan's 1960 speech in Cape Town, in which the British prime minister described the independence movements sweeping Africa.

Chinese, commonly attributed ProverbRead card

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Dig the well before you are thirsty.

Chinese has the idiom lín kě jué jǐng (临渴掘井), “to dig a well only when thirsty”, said of people who leave preparation too late. The image goes back to the Huangdi Neijing (The Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic), a medical text compiled more than two thousand years ago. It says that treating an illness once it has developed is like digging a well when already thirsty, or casting weapons after the battle has begun. English gives the medical version as “Prevention is better than cure.”

Chinese ProverbRead card

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A gem cannot be polished without friction.

The line was in print in English by 1836, when John Francis Davis, a British scholar of China who later became Governor of Hong Kong, listed it among Chinese sayings in his book The Chinese. His full version runs: “The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without adversity.” A similar picture appears in the Book of Rites (Liji), one of the Confucian classics: jade that is not carved cannot become a useful vessel, and a person who does not learn cannot know the right way to live.

Proverb (commonly labeled Chinese; this exact wording is not a documented ancient translation, though it echoes a Liji jade/learning image)Read card

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Do good and throw it into the sea.

The saying is shared around the eastern Mediterranean. Arabic has “Do good and throw it into the sea”; Greek says it with a rhyme, “Káne to kaló ke ríxto sto gialó”; and Turkish adds an ending: “İyilik et denize at, balık bilmezse Halik bilir”, if the fish do not know it, the Creator will. Throwing it into the sea means doing good and then letting it go, without keeping score or waiting for thanks, like handing in a lost wallet without leaving your name.

Arabic, Egyptian, Turkish variants ProverbRead card

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Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

The Geneva-born philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau puts the line in Julie, or the New Heloise (1761), a best-selling novel in letters. In Part One, Letter 46, Julie writes it to Saint-Preux, the tutor she loves but may not marry, because her father will not accept a commoner: “la patience est amère, mais son fruit est doux.” The saying is much older. The Persian poet Saadi wrote in his Gulistan (The Rose Garden) in 1258 that patience, though bitter, bears sweet fruit, and Turkish keeps it as a proverb.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse (1761)Read card

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A little fire is quickly trodden out, which, being suffered, rivers cannot quench.

Shakespeare wrote Henry VI, Part 3 around 1591, about the Wars of the Roses, the 15th-century fight for the English crown between the houses of Lancaster and York. In Act 4, Scene 8, word comes that the exiled Yorkist king, Edward IV, has landed with an army and is marching on London. Clarence, Edward's brother, who has gone over to the other side, urges King Henry's camp to act at once. “Suffered” means “allowed to go on”. The warning comes too late: Edward captures Henry before the scene ends.

William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3 (Clarence, Act 4, Scene 8)Read card

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There is no shame in not knowing, only in not learning.

In Turkish it is “Bilmemek ayıp değil, öğrenmemek ayıp”, and many say “sormamak”, not asking, in place of “öğrenmemek”, not learning. The Turkish Language Association glosses it: no one is at fault for not knowing everything, but taking on a job you do not understand without asking and learning is a fault. People often avoid asking for fear of looking incompetent, yet in a 2015 study, Alison Wood Brooks, Francesca Gino and Maurice Schweitzer found that people who asked for advice were judged more competent, especially on hard tasks.

Turkish ProverbRead card

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A tree will not fall with one blow.

In Turkish the proverb is “Bir vurmakla ağaç devrilmez”: one blow does not bring a tree down. The Hungarian proverb scholar Gyula Paczolay recorded it in European Proverbs in 55 Languages (1997), with this meaning: a hard task, such as changing settled ideas or moving someone from a strong position, cannot be done at once, only a little at a time. Each stroke deepens the same cut. Benjamin Franklin printed “Little strokes fell great oaks” in Poor Richard's Almanack in 1750.

Turkish ProverbRead card

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Strike the iron while it is hot.

In Turkish the proverb is “Demir tavında dövülür”, iron is forged at its tav. Tav is the heat or moisture a material needs before it can be worked, and by extension the right moment. A smith heats iron until it glows, because only then can it be hammered into shape; once it cools it resists and may crack. The advice is old across Europe: a French text from the late 1200s already gives it, and the poet Geoffrey Chaucer used it in English around 1386.

Turkish, English and European variants ProverbRead card

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A true friend is known in dark days.

In Turkish: “Dost kara günde belli olur.” A kara gün, literally a black day, is a time of trouble or grief, and Turkish calls a friend who stays through such times a kara gün dostu. The idea is ancient. The Roman poet Ennius wrote that a sure friend is recognised in an unsure situation, and the statesman Cicero quoted him in On Friendship (44 BC), adding that most people fail the test: they look down on friends when they prosper, or desert them in trouble.

Turkish ProverbRead card

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Better alone than badly accompanied.

The Spanish original is “Más vale estar solo que mal acompañado”, and Portuguese has the twin “Antes só do que mal acompanhado”. It is not against friendship; it is a warning about whom we let close, since company shapes us. As a teenager, George Washington copied out 110 Rules of Civility, based on a French Jesuit book of manners from the 1590s. Rule 56 gives the same advice: “'tis better to be alone than in bad Company.”

Spanish, Latin American ProverbRead card

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Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week.

No Spanish original of this line has been found; the traditional Spanish saying is “No dejes para mañana lo que puedas hacer hoy”, do not leave for tomorrow what you can do today. The joke rests on a real habit of mind that the psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky named the planning fallacy in 1979: we underestimate how long tasks take, so tomorrow always looks emptier than it will be. In a 1994 study, students writing a thesis took longer on average than even their own worst-case estimates.

Spanish ProverbRead card

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A closed mouth catches no flies.

Italian says “In bocca chiusa non entrano mosche” and Spanish “En boca cerrada no entran moscas”. The Instituto Cervantes, Spain's language institute, notes that the saying is probably Arab-Andalusian: it appears in Arabic proverb collections from 14th-century al-Andalus, by then the Muslim-ruled south of Spain. The picture is comic, but the point is words: keeping quiet spares us the remark we later regret, like the angry email left unsent. English says “Speech is silver, silence is golden.”

Italian ProverbRead card

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If you cannot live longer, live deeper.

The line is often shared as an Italian proverb, but no Italian original has been found. The thought itself is old. The Roman philosopher Seneca argued in On the Shortness of Life, around AD 49, that life is long enough; we make it short by wasting so much of it. In his essay “Immortality” (1875), the American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson came close to this very wording: “It is not length of life, but depth of life.”

Italian ProverbRead card

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After the game, the king and pawn go into the same box.

The Italian label appears in the American writer H. L. Mencken's dictionary of quotations (1942), but the image is older. The collected works of John Boys, Dean of Canterbury, printed in 1629, four years after his death, describe chess pieces “confusedly tumbled into a bag” once the game ends. Earlier still, in the second part of Don Quixote (1615), Cervantes has Sancho Panza compare life to chess: each piece has its role while the game lasts, then all go into one bag, as life ends in the grave.

Italian ProverbRead card

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God gives nuts to those with no teeth.

In Portuguese: “Deus dá nozes a quem não tem dentes”. Spanish has a close relative, “Dios da pan a quien no tiene dientes”, God gives bread to those without teeth. Portuguese dictionaries say it is used of good things that go to people who, through inability or neglect, cannot make use of them. It comes with a rueful smile: the promotion that arrives just before retirement, or a talent wasted on someone who does not value it. Walnuts sharpen the joke, since a hard shell needs strong teeth.

Portuguese ProverbRead card

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Soft water on hard stone eventually makes a hole.

The full Portuguese proverb rhymes: “Água mole em pedra dura, tanto bate até que fura”, soft water on hard stone strikes until it bores through. Its ancestor is Latin. The Roman poet Ovid, exiled to the Black Sea coast, wrote “gutta cavat lapidem”, the drop hollows the stone, in his Letters from Pontus in the early first century AD, and Lucretius had used the image before him. Medieval writers added the explanation: “non vi, sed saepe cadendo”, not by force, but by falling often.

Portuguese ProverbRead card

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The cheapest is often the most expensive.

German says “Wer billig kauft, kauft teuer”, who buys cheap pays dear, and English “Buy cheap, buy twice”. The trap is called false economy: a saving that costs more in the end through repairs, replacements or wasted time. The English novelist Terry Pratchett gave it a famous form in Men at Arms (1993): a rich man's good boots last for years, while a poor man keeps buying cheap pairs, spends more over time and still has wet feet. People now call this the boots theory.

German ProverbRead card

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Starting is easy, persistence is the art.

In German: “Anfangen ist leicht, Beharren eine Kunst”, beginning is easy, persevering an art. Aristotle quoted an older Greek saying that the beginning is half of the whole; the German proverb reminds us that the second half is harder. In a 2010 study at University College London, volunteers repeated a new daily habit, such as eating fruit with lunch. The typical time before it felt automatic was 66 days, though it ranged from 18 to 254, and missing the odd day made little difference.

German ProverbRead card

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A clear conscience is a soft pillow.

The German original rhymes: “Ein gutes Gewissen ist ein sanftes Ruhekissen”, pairing Gewissen (conscience) with Ruhekissen (pillow). The image fits because worry tends to arrive at night, when what we regret, or fear being found out about, keeps us awake. English has a bolder version, “A quiet conscience sleeps in thunder”, and Chinese says that if you do nothing against your conscience by day, you need not fear a ghost knocking at your door at midnight.

German ProverbRead card

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Many small streams make a big river.

In Danish: “Mange bække små gør en stor å”, and Swedish uses almost the same words. A bæk is a brook and an å a small river, so the saying pictures brooks joining into a river. It is said whenever contributions that look too small to matter add up, as in savings or a charity collection. French has “Les petits ruisseaux font les grandes rivières”, little streams make great rivers, and an old British proverb says “Many a little makes a mickle”, mickle meaning much.

Danish, Scandinavian ProverbRead card

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Better bend than break.

“Better bend than break” is listed in Alexander Hislop's The Proverbs of Scotland, first published in 1862, but the idea is much older. Its best-known form is Aesop's fable The Oak and the Reed: a storm uproots the proud oak, while the reed bends with the wind and survives. The French poet La Fontaine retold it in 1668, with the reed saying “Je plie, et ne romps pas”, I bend and do not break. Japanese has “Yanagi ni yuki-ore nashi”: the willow does not snap under snow.

Scottish, European variants ProverbRead card

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You will never plough a field by turning it over in your mind.

The saying is quoted as an Irish proverb, and its wit is a double meaning. To plough is to turn the soil over; to turn something over in your mind is to keep thinking about it. However much turning happens in the head, none of it reaches the field. The trap has a name, analysis paralysis: weighing the options for so long that nothing gets done, like the essay planned for weeks and never begun.

Irish ProverbRead card