Famous Proverbs

1] None can guess the jewel by the casket

2] God gives the grain, but we must make the furrow

3] Might knows no right

4] Water is a boon in the desert, but the drowning man curses it.

5] The best of friends must part

6] Riches along make no men happy

7] Do right and fear no man

8] A bad workman quarrels with his tools.

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

10] The pot calls the kettle black

11] Between two stools you fall to the ground

12] Waste makes wants

13] In my own house, I am king

14] Deliver your words not by number but by weight

15] A true man and a thief think not the same

16] A dwarf on a giant’s shoulders sees the farther of the two

17] You cannot unscramble eggs

18] If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em

19] When we sing, everybody hears us; when sigh, nobody hears us

20] The higher the mountain, the greater the descent

21] All things are easy, that are done willingly

22] Never too late to late to repent

23] Men do more things through habit than reason

24] The calmest husbands make the stormiest wives

25] All that glitters is not gold

26] He who sits in the well to observe the sky does not see very much.

27] Wedlock is padlock

28] Never look a gift horse in the mouth.

29] It is more blessed to give than to receive

30] He knows which side his bread is buttered

31] Ill news comes often on the back of worse

32] When the melon is ripe, it will drop by itself

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

34] Words are but wind, but seeing’s believing

35] Gnaw the bone which is fallen to thy lot

36] Every ass likes to hear himself bray

37] Wherever an ass falls, there will he never fall again

38] Lend your money and lose a friend

39] Slow and steady wins the race

40] Do as you would be done by

41] Necessity is mother of invention

42] There is no blindness like ignorance

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

44] Accidents will happen

45] Adversity comes with instruction in its hand

46] Great alms-giving lessens no man’s living

47] Words are but wind

48] No man ever becomes thoroughly bad all at once

49] He that compiles against his will, is of his own opinion still

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

51] Patient men with the day.

52] It is not the hood that makes the monk.

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

54] Blood will have blood

55] A quarrelsome man has no good neighbours

56] Adversity makes strange bedfellows

57] Don’t cast your pearls before swine

58] Trust not the many-minded populace

59] A good paymaster never wants workmen

60] An ape’s an ape, a varlet’s a varlet, though they be clad in silk or scarlet

61] Delay is the antidote of anger

62] Good clothes open all doors

63] Look on the bright side

64] The game is not worth the candle

65] An oak is not felled at one stroke

66] A man can die but once

67] Drive thy business or it will drive thee.

68] Neither a borrower nor a lender be.

69] Great actions speak minds

70] If the father is spotted, the son will be speckled

71] Kind hearts are more than coronets

72] He who would catch fish must not mind getting wet.

73] Long tarrying takes all the thanks away

74] Much meat, much malady

75] To err is human

76] It is never too late to mend

77] Repentance comes too late

78] Experience is the best teacher

79] In everything consider the end

80] Choose thy company before thy drink

81] Ill news comes apace.

82] Charity begins at home.

83] We don’t get something for nothing

84] Conscience does make cowards of us all

85] The golden age was never the present age

86] Small is beautiful

87] He who waits for another man’s platter has a cold meal

88] He stands not surely that never slips

89] Best is cheapest

90] Don’t meet trouble half-way

91] First creep, then walk

92] A man with no hands is given a ring.

93] Everybody’s business is nobody’s business

94] The longest (or farthest) way round is the nearest (or shortest) way home.

95] How seldom in life is the moon directly overhead

96] Kill two birds with one stone

97] Work expands so as to fill the time available

98] Fish and guests smell in three days

99] Kinsman helps kinsman, and woe to him that has none

100] Better to be safe than sorry.