Famous Proverbs

1] Make the best of a bad bargain

2] Truth is god’s daughter

3] He who spends before he thrives will beg before he thinks

4] Let us do evil that good may come

5] East or west, home is best

6] An honest good look covers many faults.

7] Truth is stranger than fiction

8] Judge not the tree by its bark

9] The soldier who retreated fifty paces laughed at the one who had fallen back a hundred paces

10] If you can’t bite, never show your teeth.

11] It is easy to find a stick to beat a dog

12] He that lives ill, fear follows him

13] He that comes of a hen, must scrape

14] Other times, other manners

15] The tongue is more venomous than a serpent’s sting

16] The first time, a novice the second time, an adept

17] Fools rejoice at promises

18] When a fool is sent to market, the storekeepers rejoice

19] Pleasing ware is half sold

20] Just give me one end of the line and I’ll get to the other

21] Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

22] What is worse than ill luck?

23] Much travel is needed to ripen a man’s rawness

24] Jack would be a gentleman if he could speak French

25] If one sheep leaps o’er the dyke, all the rest will follow

26] Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face

27] Though it rains gold and silver there, it’s a foreign land; though it rains daggers and spears here, it’s our own country

28] You never miss the water till the well runs dry

29] As soon as there is life there is danger

30] Love me, love my dog

31] Know when to spend and when to spare, and you need not be busy, you’ll never be bare

32] The garment worn determines how one is served

33] A thousand cranes in the air are not worth one sparrow in the fist.

34] Dreams are lies

35] To fright a bird is not the way to catch her

36] An ill tongue may do much

37] Dogs bite twice those who wear ragged clothes.

38] Little by little and bit by bit.

39] The best wine comes from an old vessel

40] Creditors have better memories than debtors

41] None so blind as those who will not see

42] Love cannot be compelled

43] To err is human

44] There are more ways to kill a dog than hanging it.

45] Love will find a way

46] Fear of death is worse than death itself

47] Good broth may be made in an old pot

48] So many men, so many opinions

49] It is a sorry flock where the ewe bears the bell

50] Poor men go to heaven as soon as rich

51] You can’t win them all

52] The loftiest towers rise from the ground

53] Words and feathers the wind carries away

54] He who gives fair words feds you with and empty spoon

55] Judge not of men and things at first sight

56] What is worth doing is worth doing well

57] In vain they rise early that used to rise late

58] All are not saints that go to church

59] Much science, much sorrow

60] The purse of the patient protracts the disease

61] A good name is sooner lost than won

62] Kill not the goose that lays the golden eggs

63] First things first

64] It is ill sitting at Rome and striving against the pope

65] Even reckoning makes long friends

66] Zeal without prudence is frenzy

67] Afflictions are sent to us by God for our good

68] Every one thinks his own sack heaviest

69] The fire which warms us a distance will burn us when near

70] No one is rich enough to do without his neighbours

71] A knave and a fool never take thought

72] If you have no honey in your pot, have some in your mouth.

73] Fair face, foul heart

74] No one ought to judge in his own cause

75] He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow

76] She’s her father’s (or mother’s) daughter

77] The thief doth fear each bush an offer

78] Dead men don’t bite

79] He who sows, trusts in God

80] Lend never that thing you needed most

81] He that sows thistles shall reap prickles.

82] A still tongue makes a wise head

83] An apple a day keeps the doctor away

84] Money is the sinews of war

85] The eye sees only what it has the power of seeing

86] God comes at last when think he is farthest off

87] They can do least two boast loudest

88] Union (or Unity) is strength

89] The eye is bigger than the belly

90] The calmest husbands make the stormiest wives

91] Mercy to the criminal may be cruelty to the people

92] An empty sack cannot stand upright

93] Love rules without a sword, and binds without a cord

94] What the king wills, that the law wills

95] What is not even scabies, he makes out to be an ulcer

96] A willing helper does not wait until he is asked.

97] Patient waiters are no losers

98] Absence makes the heart grow fonder

99] Better a bare foot than none

100] Courtesy on one side never lasts long