Famous Proverbs

1] Distance lends enchantment to the view

2] Men make houses, women make homes

3] Misfortune does not always come to injure

4] Walls have ears

5] A man can do no more than he can

6] Every ass thinks himself worthy to stand with the kings horses.

7] A good face is a letter of recommendation

8] Money breeds (or makes, or begets) money

9] A woman’s work is never done

10] A man may lose more in an hour than he can get in seven

11] Four eyes see better than two.

12] However much the arm may swing out, the armpit is where it sticks

13] Virtue carries a lean purse

14] Who repairs not his gutter, repairs his whole house

15] An open door may tempt a saint

16] Silence never makes mistakes

17] The shoemaker’s son always goes barefoot.

18] A thing of beauty is a joy forever

19] Love is lawless.

20] Goodness is better than beauty

21] He that seeks trouble never misses

22] Trust is the mother of deceit

23] Discretion of speech is more than eloquence.

24] You cannot get ivory from a dog’s mouth

25] So many men, so many opinions

26] The truest jests sound worst in guilty ears

27] Unpaid debts are unforgiven sins

28] Pardoning the bad is injuring the good

29] Respect is greater from a distance

30] Death devours lambs as well as sheep

31] Even Buddha has a limit to what he can tolerate

32] An old man is a bed full of bones

33] A bad shearer never had a good sickle

34] Our neighbour’s ground yields better corn than ours

35] Nothing is easy to the unwilling

36] Take things as you find them

37] The folly of one man is the fortune of another

38] All’s well that ends well

39] The crow laughs at the pig for being black

40] It’s hard to get one’s own sword back when it’s in someone else’s scabbard

41] The envious grow thin at others’ prosperity

42] After a storm comes a calm

43] To teach is to learn twice over

44] You cannot teach an old dog new tricks

45] When the horse has reached the brink of the precipice, it is too late to pull the reins.

46] No man is content with his lot

47] Better to have one eye than be blind altogether

48] He has not lost all who has one cast left

49] Poverty is the mother of crime

50] As is the mould, so will the cake be.

51] Christmas comes but once a year

52] One man sows and another reaps

53] Don’t try to run before you walk

54] An ass must be tied where the master will have him

55] He that has a fellow-ruler, has an over-ruler. ¶ There is no good accord, where every man would be a lord

56] You cannot know the wine by the barrel

57] From the sublime to the ridiculous is only a step

58] One must be a servant before one can be a master

59] God helps those who help themselves

60] Birds once snared fear all bushes

61] When the ear will not listen, the heart escapes sorrow

62] The best wine comes from an old vessel

63] An account is an account, and a brother a brother.

64] The early man ever borrows from the late man

65] Who suffers much is silent

66] Don’t go near the water until you learn how to swim

67] Bells call others, but themselves enter not in to the church

68] All things are difficult before they are easy

69] Honey is sweet, but the bee stings

70] Lend your money and lose a friend

71] The more laws, the more offenders

72] Venture a small fish to catch a great one.

73] A tiger that roars is not a man-eater

74] The money you refuse will never do you good

75] Cowardice is afraid to be known or seen

76] Money is power

77] Ill gotten, ill spent

78] Our neighbour’s ground yields better corn than ours

79] Don’t have too many irons in the fire

80] Every horse thinks its own pack heaviest

81] Truth is god’s daughter

82] Books and friends should be few but good

83] Far from eye, far from heart

84] Live and let live

85] A good tongue is a good weapon

86] Give him an inch and he’ll take a yard

87] Necessity knows no law

88] Confession of our fault is the next thing to innocence

89] There’s small choice in rotten apples.

90] An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure

91] Who lives by hope will die in hunger

92] It is easier to capture a tiger in the hills than to ask for favours from a man

93] Everybody’s business is nobody’s business

94] An angry man is not fit to pray

95] Give yourself a pinch, and you will know how a pinch must hurt others

96] Give and take is fair play

97] Better an egg today than a hen tomorrow.

98] Keep thy shop and thy shop will keep thee.

99] Arms bend inwards – not outwards.

100] The tongue talks at the heads cost