Proverbs: quotes, facts and reflections - Page 3

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One generation plants the trees. Another gets the shade.

The Chinese proverb runs “qián rén zāi shù, hòu rén chéng liáng”: those before us plant the trees, those after us enjoy the shade. A form of it was listed among everyday sayings in 1751, in Zhai Hao's collection Tongsu bian. The thought is older still: the Roman statesman Cicero, in his essay On Old Age, quotes the comic poet Caecilius Statius on a farmer who plants trees to benefit another generation. It suits any work done for later generations, from schools to forests.

Chinese proverbRead card

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The tree laden with fruit always bends low.

Sri Ramakrishna (1836–1886) was a Hindu mystic from Bengal whose followers recorded his sayings; this one is no. 235 in the Oxford scholar Max Müller's Ramakrishna: His Life and Sayings (1898). The image is far older in India: a verse in the Sanskrit poet Kalidasa's play Shakuntala, from the 4th or 5th century, says that trees bow low under their fruit, as good people stay humble in prosperity. English has the same proverb: the boughs that bear most hang lowest, recorded by Thomas Fuller in 1732.

Sri Ramakrishna -- often circulated as an anonymous Indian proverbRead card

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A guest sees more in an hour than the host sees in a year.

English proverb collections list this saying as Polish, and sometimes as Indian, but no original has been traced in Polish or in any Indian language. Yiddish has a rhyming cousin: a guest for a while sees for a mile. Anyone who has had visitors knows the feeling: after a year in a flat you stop seeing the cracked tile or the crooked picture, and a friend spots both before taking off their coat. That is the proverb's point: fresh eyes notice what familiarity hides.

Proverb of uncertain originRead card

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When an elephant is in trouble, even a frog will kick him.

English collections list this as an Indian or Hindu proverb, though its original wording has not been traced. The picture is plain: while the elephant is strong, no frog would dare touch it; once it is stuck or hurt, even the smallest creature joins in. People say it when a boss, a champion or a star loses power and critics who kept quiet suddenly speak up. In one of Aesop's fables, an old, feeble lion kicked by a donkey says the insult is like dying twice.

Indian ProverbRead card

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Fortune favours the bold.

This Latin proverb has several forms. The playwright Terence used “fortes fortuna adiuvat” in his comedy Phormio in 161 BC, and the orator Cicero later called it an old proverb. In Virgil's epic the Aeneid, the warrior Turnus cries “audentis Fortuna iuvat” as he urges his men to attack. Fortuna was the Roman goddess of luck, so the line first meant that the goddess herself takes the side of the brave. Today it is the motto of many regiments, schools and families.

Latin, Ancient Roman ProverbRead card

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A sound mind in a sound body.

The phrase comes from the tenth Satire of the Roman poet Juvenal, written in the early 2nd century AD. The poem mocks people who pray for wealth, power, fame, beauty or a long life, since such wishes often bring ruin. If you must pray, Juvenal says, ask for “mens sana in corpore sano”, a sound mind in a sound body, and a brave heart that does not fear death. It later became a motto of sport, and in Turkey its Turkish form is often credited to Atatürk, the republic's founder.

Latin, Roman ProverbRead card

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The gods help those who help themselves.

The saying began in ancient Greece, where it may already have been a proverb. The Athenian playwright Sophocles wrote that heaven never helps those who will not act, and in Aesop's fable of Hercules and the Wagoner, a driver whose wagon is stuck prays to Hercules and is told to get to work himself. The English form with “God” goes back to the 17th-century political writer Algernon Sidney; Benjamin Franklin printed it in Poor Richard's Almanack in 1736. It is not in the Bible.

Ancient Greek, later English formRead card

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The one who climbs the highest tree sees the furthest, but also falls the hardest.

This line is widely shared as a Persian proverb, but no Persian original has been found for it. A genuine Persian proverb makes a related point with a roof instead of a tree: har ke bāmash bish, barfash bishtar, the bigger your roof, the more snow it carries. The higher you rise, the further you see, and the more you have to carry and to lose. A newly promoted manager knows the feeling: the whole company comes into view, and so does every problem in it.

Persian proverbRead card

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Do not stand in a dangerous place hoping not to be hit.

This line circulates in English as an Ethiopian proverb, but no Ethiopian original has been traced. The same advice is much older in the Talmud, the great collection of Jewish law and teaching: Rabbi Yannai, a 3rd-century teacher, said that no one should stand in a place of danger counting on a miracle, and he would inspect a ferry before crossing in it. The point is simple: step away from avoidable danger instead of trusting luck to spare you.

Ethiopian proverbRead card

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The graveyard is full of people who thought they were indispensable.

In May 1907 the American writer Elbert Hubbard wrote in his magazine The Philistine that the graveyards are full of people the world could not do without. Hubbard was a writer, publisher and founder of the Roycroft community of craftspeople in East Aurora, New York. A version with “indispensable” was used in the Irish parliament in 1924, about Dublin's Glasnevin Cemetery. The line is often credited to the French leaders Charles de Gaulle or Georges Clemenceau, but the evidence for either is weak.

Anonymous saying; earliest documented close form: Elbert Hubbard, The Philistine (1907)Read card

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A thief thinks everyone steals.

In Danish the proverb is “tyv tror hver mand stjæler”: a thief believes every man steals. It is said of people who assume their own fault is common, often as an excuse for it. The saying also appears in the Norwegian folk tale “Gullfuglen” (The Golden Bird), published by the folklorist Peter Christen Asbjørnsen in 1871: a prince, caught by a troll, answers him with it. Psychologists call the habit of seeing our own faults in others projection.

Danish proverbRead card

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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

StillnessLiterature

The wound is where the light enters you.

The sentence condenses lines by Coleman Barks, the American poet whose free versions made Rumi a bestseller in English; Barks did not read Persian and reworked scholarly translations. His poem “Childhood Friends” (1990) urges the reader to keep looking at “the bandaged place”, where the light enters. It draws on the Masnavi of Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet and Sufi mystic of Konya, who tells the wounded not to turn away from the plaster a spiritual guide lays on them: the healing comes from its light, not from themselves.

Attributed to Rumi; exact English sentence not matched to a standard textRead card

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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

StillnessLiterature

The rose's lover must endure the thorn.

The Turkish Language Association's dictionary explains that people put up with the troubles that come with someone, or some work, they love. The rose and its thorn are an old pair in Turkish and Persian poetry; in classical Ottoman verse the nightingale longs for the rose, and the thorn often stands for the pain of love. English has “No rose without a thorn”, as does Turkish, “Dikensiz gül olmaz”, but this proverb adds that whoever loves the rose accepts its thorn.

Turkish, Persian variants ProverbRead card

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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

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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

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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

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Better to light one candle than curse the darkness.

The saying is often called Chinese or credited to Confucius, but its earliest known version is English. In a sermon published in 1907, the Methodist preacher William L. Watkinson warned that angry speeches against evil come easier than good works: it is better to light the candle than to curse the darkness. That year the sermon was reprinted in China's Millions, a missionary magazine, perhaps explaining the Chinese label. The Christophers, a Catholic movement, took it as their motto, and in 1962 Adlai Stevenson used it to praise Eleanor Roosevelt.

Anonymous saying; earliest documented close form located in William L. Watkinson (1907)Read card

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While there is life, there is hope.

The Roman statesman Cicero quotes this as a common saying in a letter to his friend Atticus in 49 BC, during the civil war between Caesar and Pompey: as people say of a sick man, while there is breath there is hope, and so, as long as Pompey was in Italy, he had not given up. The shorter Latin Dum spiro, spero, “while I breathe, I hope”, is of unknown origin; it is the motto of South Carolina and of St Andrews in Scotland.

Latin, Roman ProverbRead card

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A crooked tree lives its own life, but a straight tree is turned into wood.

No Chinese original of this wording has been traced; the idea comes from the Zhuangzi, a classic of Chinese philosophy from the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. In one story a carpenter walks past a giant oak by a village shrine without a glance, because its timber is useless. That night the tree appears in his dream: being useless, it says, has kept it alive. Another chapter says it plainly: “The straight tree is felled first.” Turkish has a similar saying: people throw stones at the tree that bears fruit.

Chinese proverbRead card

StillnessPhilosophy

Falling down is not a failure. Failure comes when you stay where you have fallen.

No author is known for this saying; it is usually shared without a name. The idea runs through many traditions. Japanese has nana korobi ya oki, “fall seven times, get up eight”. The Irish writer Oliver Goldsmith put a close version in The Citizen of the World (1760–61), letters supposedly written by a Chinese traveller in England: our greatest glory lies not in never falling but in rising every time we fall. Because of that invented narrator, the line is still often credited to Confucius.

AnonymousRead card

StillnessLiterature

A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.

The saying goes back to al-Jahiz (c. 776–868), a master of Arabic prose who grew up poor in Basra, in Iraq, selling fish to help his family. Praising books in a famous passage, he called the book a vessel filled with knowledge, a garden carried in a sleeve and a meadow turned over in the lap, one that speaks for the dead and passes on the words of the living. Later versions put the garden in a pocket. Legend says he died under a fallen pile of books.

Arabic ProverbRead card

StillnessLiterature

What you sow is what you reap.

Turkish has the proverb in exactly this form; English says “As you sow, so shall you reap.” The image is far older: Cicero's On the Orator (55 BC) records a Roman politician using it as a retort in a debate over a new law, “Ut sementem feceris, ita metes.” About a century later, Paul used it in his Letter to the Galatians. Turkish also has a sharper version, “rüzgâr ekip fırtına biçmek”, to sow the wind and reap the storm: to meet far worse than the harm one did.

Turkish, Biblical, global variants ProverbRead card