Ikigai DailySayings passed down
Traditional sayings about patience, effort and everyday life, with background on their meaning.
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In German: 'Übung macht den Meister.' The word Meister comes from the old craft guilds, in which an apprentice (Lehrling) became a journeyman (Geselle) and, after years of work, could qualify as a master. The proverb packs that path into four words: skill is built by repetition, not handed out as a gift. English says 'practice makes perfect'.
In French: 'Petit à petit, l'oiseau fait son nid.' A bird brings one twig at a time; no single twig looks like progress, yet in the end there is a nest. The saying is used to encourage patience with slow work, much as English speakers say 'Rome wasn't built in a day'. Italian has 'piano piano si va lontano', 'slowly, slowly, one goes far'.
In Spanish: 'No hay mal que por bien no venga.' It is one of the commonest consolations in Spanish, said when a plan falls through or bad news arrives. Like the English 'every cloud has a silver lining', it does not deny the setback; it suggests that some good may come of it that cannot yet be seen. Turkish has an almost word-for-word twin: 'Her şerde bir hayır vardır', 'there is good in every evil'.
In Russian: 'Терпение и труд всё перетрут' (terpeniye i trud vsyo peretrut), literally 'patience and labour will grind through everything'. The rhyme of trud and peretrut makes it easy to remember, and it is one of the best-known Russian proverbs. Russian has a companion saying about water, 'a drop wears away stone', and the same image appears in the Latin 'gutta cavat lapidem'.
The saying most likely comes from medieval Persian Sufi poetry. In a tale told by the twelfth-century poets Sanai and Attar, a king asks his wise men for words that will lift him when he is sad, and they give him a ring engraved 'this too shall pass'. Jewish folklore tells the same story about King Solomon, and Hebrew speakers still say 'gam zeh ya'avor'. The line reminds us that neither hard times nor good ones last for ever.
This Turkish proverb is very old: a form of it, tama tama köl bolur, appears in the Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk, the dictionary of Turkic languages that Mahmud al-Kashgari compiled in the 1070s. It means that small amounts, patiently added up, become something large, and it is said about saving money, learning or any slow, steady effort. English says 'many a little makes a mickle', and French 'little by little, the bird builds its nest'.
This whakataukī, or Māori proverb, from New Zealand is often spoken at gatherings, in schools and in speeches. It is traditionally credited to Meri Ngaroto, a 17th-century woman of the Te Aupōuri tribe in the far north, as the end of a longer saying that asks where the bellbird would sing if the heart of the flax plant were torn out. Repeating 'he tangata' three times is a Māori way of speaking for emphasis.
“Sabreden derviş muradına ermiş” is one of the best-known Turkish proverbs. A dervish is a member of a Sufi order, Sufism being the mystical tradition of Islam; the Mevlevi order, famous for its whirling ceremony, is one example. Dervishes were known for patience and simple living, so here the dervish stands for anyone who can wait calmly. The Arabic saying “patience is the key to relief” carries the same idea, as does the English “everything comes to those who wait”.
