Famous Proverbs

1] The great would have none great, and the little all little

2] East or west, home is best

3] A good anvil does not fear the hammer

4] A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds

5] There’s no such thing as free as a free lunch

6] No man is a hero to his valet

7] Don’t put the cart before the horse

8] Ale will make a cat speak

9] God never sends mouths but he sent meat

10] Give a lie a twenty-four-hour start, and you can never overtake it.

11] A good servant must have good wages

12] The tongue is not steel, yet it cuts

13] Love is blind

14] If you don’t make mistakes, you don’t make anything

15] A good paymaster never wants workmen

16] Good luck beats early rising

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

18] Whether the pitcher strikes the stone, or the stone the pitcher, it is bad for the pitcher

19] Life is short and time is swift

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

21] If your can’t help friend with money, help him at least with a sigh

22] Wine uncloaks the words of the heart

23] An evil life is a kind of death.

24] No pot so ugly as not to find a cover

25] A growing youth has a wolf in his belly

26] Envy eats nothing but it own heart

27] A spear you can see can easily be avoided; a hidden arrows is difficult to guard against.

28] Homo is a common name to all men.

29] Use the means, and God will give the blessings

30] Better some of a pudding than none of a pie.

31] You cannot make a crab walk straight

32] The apples on the other side of the wall are the sweetest

33] Enquire not what boils in another’s pot. ¶ Listeners seldom hear good of themselves

34] All’s fair in love and war

35] Have patience with a friend rather than lost him forever.

36] Friendship should not be all on one side

37] Good horses always get ridden; good men get imposed upon.

38] Truthfulness becomes the gentleman

39] He that loses anything and gets wisdom by it is a gainer by the loss

40] Many hands make light work

41] God gives us the milk, but not the pail

42] Curiosity killed the cat.

43] He that is in poverty is still in suspicion

44] Don’t kick against the pricks

45] Wives must be had, be they good or bad

46] Every little helps

47] Discretion is the better part of valour

48] In your anxiety to avoid losing a drop, you spill the whole lot

49] Sow thin and mow thin

50] First think, and then speak

51] Even water has its ebb and flow

52] Give and spend, and God will send

53] Conscience is a thousand witnesses

54] Keep no more cats than will catch mice

55] Nothing is certain but the unforeseen

56] Hope is but the dream of those that wake

57] All roads lead to Rome

58] He who would hang his dog gives out first that it is mad

59] One volunteer is worth two pressed men

60] Call no man happy till he is dead

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

62] New meat begets a new appetite

63] He is a fool who makes his physician his heir

64] One cannot put back the clock

65] The dog is a lion in his own house

66] From a foolish judge, a quick sentence

67] Like question, like answer.

68] Muck and money go together

69] Stolen pleasures are sweetest

70] Better be born lucky than wise.

71] Divine grace was never slow

72] He that would catch fish must venture his bait

73] He has to do what is foul, never comes away clean

74] Black will take no other hue

75] Even reckoning makes long friends

76] God tempers that wind to the shorn lamb

77] The difficult is done at once; the impossible takes a little longer

78] It is late to cover the well when the child is drowned.

79] Pinch the right thigh and the left will feel the pain too.

80] Do not limp before the lame

81] The pot calls the kettle black

82] Ill luck is good for something

83] It is easy to move rivers and mountains, but difficult to change a person’s basic nature

84] Every one thinks his own sack heaviest

85] Keep your mouth shut and your ears open

86] Goodness is better than beauty

87] Do leaves sprout on rootless trees?

88] The apples on the other side of the wall are the sweetest

89] All is fair in love and war

90] Whom god loves, his house is sweet to him

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

92] He that peeps in at his neighbor’s window may chance to lose his eyes

93] It is ill waiting for dead men’s shoes

94] A jest breaks no bones

95] Union is strength.

96] Not good is it to harp on the on the frayed string

97] None so deaf as those that will not hear

98] Who is worse shod than the shoemaker’s wife?

99] The best is often the enemy of the good

100] He stands not surely that never slips