Famous Proverbs

1] What soberness conceals, drunkenness reveals

2] Where your will is ready, your feet are light

3] He that has no money needs no purse

4] Open a book and you profit by what you read

5] He who peeps through a hole, may see what will vex him

6] It’s either not to begin or not to stop once you’ve begun

7] Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, and half shut afterwards

8] Like question, like answer.

9] Where grooms and householders are all alike great, very disastrous will it be for the houses and all that dwell in them

10] The longest journey starts with a single step

11] Seldom is a long man wise, or a low man lowly

12] One man sows and another reaps

13] An oak is not felled at one stroke

14] What has been, may be

15] Never was a cat or dog drowned, that could but see the shore

16] Some are wise and some are otherwise

17] Why does one man’s yawning make another yawn?

18] Health without money is half an ague

19] Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched

20] All’s grist that comes to the mill.

21] Love your neighbour, yet pull not down your hedge

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

23] The fox may grow grey, but never good

24] War, hunting and love are as full of trouble as pleasure

25] Men make houses, women make homes

26] There are two sides to every question

27] The grapes are sour’, as the fox said when he could not reach them

28] A good word for a bad one is worth much and costs little

29] Health and wealth create beauty

30] A mouse may help a lion

31] A chain is no stronger than its weakest link

32] In a church, in an inn, and in a coffin, all men are equal

33] Better ask the way than go astray

34] A change is as good as rest

35] It is well to live that one may learn

36] Of three main roads, take the middle one

37] Will is no skill

38] Don’t take a bull in to a china shop.

39] Never say die

40] A joke’s a very serious thing

41] Divide and rule

42] He should have (or He needs) a long spoon who sups with the devil

43] A man’s mother is his other God

44] Armies are maintained for years to be used on a single day.

45] How ever much you learn, you won’t know how to raise the dead

46] No day so clear but has dark clouds

47] Ambition loses many a man

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

49] First thrive then wive

50] Vice makes virtue shine

51] Misfortune makes foes of friends

52] Travel broadens the mind

53] The flesh is aye fairest that is farthest from the bone

54] The little cannot be great unless he devours many

55] We live laws, not by examples

56] The envious man shall never want woe

57] Pleasure has a sting in its tail

58] East or west, home is best

59] Fair face, foul heart

60] Debt is an evil conscience

61] Eggs and oaths are easily broken

62] Two blacks do not make a white

63] Death is the grand leveler

64] Fine words dress ill deeds

65] Of the ten fingers, some are long and some are short.

66] If you gently touch a nettle, it’ll sting you for your pains; grasp it like a man of mettle, and it soft as silk remains.

67] Fall not into the fire when you try to avoid smoke

68] Don’t build the sty before the litter comes

69] No man is his craft’s master the first day

70] Better no doctor at all than three.

71] III counsel mars all

72] Anger begins with folly and ends with repentance.

73] Ill news comes apace.

74] The heart soon forgets what the eye sees not

75] Pleasure is due only when all duty’s done.

76] An army marches on its stomach

77] Live not to eat, but eat to live

78] Better be a fool than a knave

79] The tide never goes out so far but it always comes in again

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

81] A good conscience is a soft pillow

82] Cast not the first stone.

83] Business is business

84] A man of gladness seldom falls into madness

85] Never do evil that good may come of it

86] The shoemaker’s son always goes barefoot.

87] The day obliterates the promise of the might

88] Poor men’s words have little weight

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

90] A little help is worth a deal of pity

91] Hunger is sharper than the sword

92] Three helping one another, bear the burthen of six

93] Tomorrow is another day

94] The fine pullet shows its excellence from the egg.

95] Truth is god’s daughter

96] That which Nature paints never fades

97] Misery acquaints men with strange bedfellows

98] It takes two to make a quarrel

99] Don’t play with fire

100] Live and Learn