 
|
It is less of a problem to be poor, than to be dishonest.
-American Indian Proverb, Anishinabe
|
|
|
|
What the people believe is true.
-American Indian Proverb, Anishinabe
|
|
|
|
Walk lightly in the spring; Mother Earth is pregnant.
-American Indian Proverb, Kiowa
|
|
|
|
Many have fallen with the bottle in their hand.
-American Indian Proverb, Lakota
|
|
|
|
Force, no matter how concealed, begets resistance.
-American Indian Proverb, Lakota
|
|
|
|
When a man moves away from nature his heart becomes hard.
-American Indian Proverb, Lakota
|
|
|
|
Do not speak of evil for it creates curiosityin the hearts of the young.
-American Indian Proverb, Lakota
|
|
|
|
Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past, Wisdom is of the future.
-American Indian Proverb, Lumbee
|
|
|
|
Pray to understand what man has forgotten.
-American Indian Proverb, Lumbee
|
|
|
|
Everyone who is successful must have dreamed of something.
-American Indian Proverb, Maricopa
|
|
|
|
If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies in yourself.
-American Indian Proverb, Minquass
|
|
|
|
The soul would have no rainbow if the eyes had no tears.
-American Indian Proverb, Minquass
|
|
|
|
A good chief gives, he does not take.
-American Indian Proverb, Mohawk
|
|
|
|
A rocky vineyard does not need a prayer, but a pick axe.
-American Indian Proverb, Navajo
|
|
|
|
You can't wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.
-American Indian Proverb, Navajo
|
|
|
|
There is nothing as eloquent as a rattlesnakes tail.
-American Indian Proverb, Navajo
|
|
|
|
I have been to the end of the earth,
I have been to the end of the waters,
I have been to the end of the sky,
I have been to the end of the mountains,
I have found none that are not my friends.
-American Indian Proverb, Navajo
|
|
|
|
Thoughts are like arrows: once released, they strike their mark. Guard them well or one day you may be your own victim.
-American Indian Proverb, Navajo
|
|
|
|
Every animal knows more than you do.
-American Indian Proverb, Nez Perce
|
|
|
|
White men have too many chiefs.
-American Indian Proverb, Nez Perce
|
|
|
|
Talk to your children while they are eating;
what you say will stay even after you are gone.
-American Indian Proverb, Nez Perce
|
|
|
|
To touch the earth is to have harmony with nature.
-American Indian Proverb, Oglala Sioux
|
|
|
|
When a fox walks lame, the old rabbit jumps.
-American Indian Proverb, Oklahoma
|
|
|
|
A starving man will eat with the wolf.
-American Indian Proverb, Oklahoma
|
|
|
|
The coward shoots with shut eyes.
-American Indian Proverb, Oklahoma
|
|
|
|
It is easy to be brave from a distance.
-American Indian Proverb, Omaha
|
|
|
|
Ask questions from you heart and you will be answered from the heart.
-American Indian Proverb, Omaha
|
|
|
|
The bird who has eaten cannot fly with the bird that is hungry.
-American Indian Proverb, Omaha
|
|
|
|
Respect the gift and the giver.
-American Indian Proverb, Omaha
|
|
|
|
Misfortunes do not flourish on one path, they grow everywhere.
-American Indian Proverb, Pawnee
|
|
|
|
A hungry stomach makes a short prayer.
-American Indian Proverb, Paiute
|
|
|
|
Do not wrong or hate your neighbor for it is not he that you wrong but yourself.
-American Indian Proverb, Pima
|
|
|
|
Make my enemy brave and strong, so that if defeated, I will not be ashamed.
-American Indian Proverb, Plains Indian
|
|
|
|
Cherish youth, but trust old age.
-American Indian Proverb, Pueblo
|
|
|
|
Sharing and giving are the ways of God.
-American Indian Proverb, Sauk
|
|
|
|
We are all one child spinning through Mother Sky.
-American Indian Proverb, Shawnee
|
|
|
|
Each person is his own judge.
-American Indian Proverb, Shawnee
|
|
|
|
Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.
-American Indian Proverb, Shawnee
|
|
|
|
Show respect for all men, but grovel to none.
-American Indian Proverb, Shawnee
|
|
|
|
We are made from Mother Earth and we go back to Mother Earth.
-American Indian Proverb, Shenandoah
|
|
|
|
It is no longer good enough to cry peace, we must act peace, live peace and live in peace.
-American Indian Proverb, Shenandoah
|
|
|
|
When a favor is shown to a white man, he feels it in his head and the tongue speaks out; when a kindness is shown to an Indian, he feels it in his heart and the heart has no tongue.
-American Indian Proverb, Shoshone
|
|
|
|
With all things and in all things,we are relatives.
-American Indian Proverb, Sioux
|
|
|
|
Poverty is a noose that strangles humility and breeds disrespect for God and man.
-American Indian Proverb, Sioux
|
|
|
|
The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives.
-American Indian Proverb, Sioux
|
|
|
|
There are many good moccasin tracks along the trail of a straight arrow.
-American Indian Proverb, Sioux
|
|
|
|
A people without a history is like the wind over buffalo grass.
-American Indian Proverb, Sioux
|
|
|
|
The moon is not shamed by the barking of dogs.
-American Indian Proverb, Southwest
|
|
|
|
He who would do great things should not attempt them all alone.
-American Indian Proverb, Southwest
|
|
|
|
Those who have one foot in the canoe, and one foot in the boat, are going to fall into the river.
-American Indian Proverb, Tuscarora
|
|
|
|
Man has responsiblity, not power.
-American Indian Proverb, Tuscarora
|
|
|
|
They are not dead who live in the hearts they leave behind.
-American Indian Proverb, Tuscarora
|
|
|
|
The way of the troublemaker is thorny.
-American Indian Proverb, Umpqua
|
|
|
|
God gives us each a song.
-American Indian Proverb, Ute
|
|
|
|
Don't walk behind me; I may not lead.
Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow.
Walk beside me; that we may be as one.
-American Indian Proverb, Ute
|
|
|
|
A man must make his own arrows.
-American Indian Proverb, Winnebago
|
|
|
|
Silence has so much meaning.
-American Indian Proverb, Yurok
|
|
|
|
After dark all cats are leopards.
-American Indian Proverb, Zuni
|
|
|
|
Walk tall as the trees,
live strong as the mountains,
be gentle as the spring winds,
keep the warmth of the summer sun
in your heart, and the great spirit
will always be with you.
-American Indian Proverb, unknown tribe
|
|
|
|
A proverb is the child of experience.
-English Proverb
|
|
|
|
Most of us do not look as handsome to others as we do to ourselves.
-American Indian Proverb, Anishinabe
|
|
|
|
Before eating, always take a little time to thank the food.
-American Indian Proverb, Arapaho
|
|
|
|
When we show our respect for other living things, they respond with respect for us.
-American Indian Proverb, Arapaho
|
|
|
|
If we wonder often, the gift of knowledge will come.
-American Indian Proverb, Arapaho
|
|
|
|
Take only what you need and leave the land as you found it.
-American Indian Proverb, Arapaho
|
|
|
|
All plants are our brothers and sisters. They talk to us and if we listen, we can hear them.
-American Indian Proverb, Arapaho
|
|
|
|
Each bird loves to hear himself sing.
-American Indian Proverb, Arapaho
|
|
|
|
Those that lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.
-American Indian Proverb, Blackfoot
|
|
|
|
Life is not separate from death. It only looks that way.
-American Indian Proverb, Blackfoot
|
|
|
|
The weakness of the enemy makes our strength.
-American Indian Proverb, Cherokee
|
|
|
|
Don't let yesterday use up too much of today.
-American Indian Proverb, Cherokee
|
|
|
|
When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.
-American Indian Proverb, Cherokee
|
|
|
|
Beware of the man who does not talk, and the dog that does not bark.
-American Indian Proverb, Cheyenne
|
|
|
|
Do not judge your neighbor until you walk two moons in his moccasins.
-American Indian Proverb, Cheyenne
|
|
|
|
A danger foreseen is half-avoided.
-American Indian Proverb, Cheyenne
|
|
|
|
A good soldier is a poor scout.
-American Indian Proverb, Cheyenne
|
|
|
|
Our first teacher is our own heart.
-American Indian Proverb, Cheyenne
|
|
|
|
Judge not by the eye but by the heart.
-American Indian Proverb, Cheyenne
|
|
|
|
Our pleasures are shallow, our sorrows are deep.
-American Indian Proverb, Cheyenne
|
|
|
|
If a man is as wise as a serpent, he can afford to be as harmless as a dove.
-American Indian Proverb, Cheyenne
|
|
|
|
It is good to tell one's heart.
-American Indian Proverb, Chippewa
|
|
|
|
All who have died are equal.
-American Indian Proverb, Comanche
|
|
|
|
Treachery darkens the chain of friendship, but truth makes it brighter than ever.
-American Indian Proverb, Conestoga
|
|
|
|
Never sit while your seniors stand.
-American Indian Proverb, Cree
|
|
|
|
Knowledge that is not used is abused.
-American Indian Proverb, Cree
|
|
|
|
One rain does not make a crop.
-American Indian Proverb, Creole
|
|
|
|
You already possess everything necessary to become great.
-American Indian Proverb, Crow
|
|
|
|
Old age is not as honorable as death, but most people want it.
-American Indian Proverb, Crow
|
|
|
|
Man's law changes with his understanding of man. Only the laws of the spirit remain always the same.
-American Indian Proverb, Crow
|
|
|
|
The only things that need the protection of men are the things of men, not the things of the spirit.
-American Indian Proverb, Crow
|
|
|
|
We will be known forever by the tracks we leave.
-American Indian Proverb, Dakota
|
|
|
|
There is no death, only a change of worlds.
-American Indian Proverb, Duwamish
|
|
|
|
The rain falls on the just and the unjust.
-American Indian Proverb, Hopi
|
|
|
|
Don't be afraid to cry. It will free your mind of sorrowful thoughts.
-American Indian Proverb, Hopi
|
|
|
|
All dreams spin out from the same web.
-American Indian Proverb, Hopi
|
|
|
|
The one who tells the stories rules the world.
-American Indian Proverb, Hopi
|
|
|
|
Wisdom comes only when you stop looking for it and start living the life the Creator intended for you.
-American Indian Proverb, Hopi
|
|
|
|
One finger cannot lift a pebble.
-American Indian Proverb, Hopi
|
|
|
|
The rainbow is a sign from Him who is in all things.
-American Indian Proverb, Hopi
|
|
|
|
In death, I am born.
-American Indian Proverb, Hopi
|
|
|
|
Truth does not happen, it just is.
-American Indian Proverb, Hopi
|
|
|
|
The supreme law of the land is the Great Spirit's law, not man's law.
-American Indian Proverb, Hopi
|
|
|
|
No answer is also an answer.
-American Indian Proverb, Hopi
|
|
|
|
A people without faith in themselves cannot survive.
-American Indian Proverb, Hopi
|
|
|
|
Work hard, keep the ceremonies, live peaceably, and unite your hearts.
-American Indian Proverb, Hopi
|
|
|
|
In age, talk; in childhood, tears.
-American Indian Proverb, Hopi
|
|
|
|
A brave man dies but once, a coward many times.
-American Indian Proverb, Iowa
|
|
|
|
The greatest strength is gentleness.
-American Indian Proverb, Iroquois
|
|
|
|
Geng Lei was a famous archer of the state of Wei. One day while he was on an excursion outside the city with the King of Wei, he saw a bird circling in the sky. The King asked him to down the goose with an arrow. He answered: I don't have to use an arrow. I can just make the bird fall down from the sky with my arch. Do you have that marvellous skill? asked the King. Presently they saw the wild goose flying from the east. Geng Ying twanged the string of his bow and indeed the wild goose at once dropped to the ground in front of them. You're really a wonderful archer, said the King with approval. Geng Lei said, This is a wounded wild goose. From its desolate cry and tired flight you can see its wound has not yet healed. When it heard the twang of my bow-string, it thought it was again hit by an arrow and fell from the sky.
-Chinese Proverb, Best Chinese Idioms, p.292
|
|
|
|
A country can be judged by the quality of its proverbs.
-Proverb
|
|
|
|
Epigrams succeed where epics fail.
-Proverb
|
|
|
|
Proverbs are mental gems gathered in the diamond fields of the mind.
-William R. Alger
|
|
|
|
An epigram is a flashlight of a truth; a witticism, truth laughing at itself.
-Minna Antrim
|
|
|
|
The genius, wit, and the spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs.
-Francis Bacon
|
|
|
|
Until a friend or relative has applied a particular proverb to your own life, or until you've watched him apply the proverb to his own life, it has no power to sway you.
-Nicholson Baker
|
|
|
|
Don't talk unless you can improve the silence.
-Jorge Luis Borges
|
|
|
|
...the story of a man who saw three fellows laying bricks at a new building:
He approached the first and asked, What are you doing?
Clearly irritated, the first man responded, What the heck do you think I'm doing? I'm laying these darn bricks!
He then walked over to the second bricklayer and asked the same question.
The second fellow responded, Oh, I'm making a living.
He approached the third bricklayer with the same question, What are you doing?
The third looked up, smiled and said, I'm building a cathedral.
At the end of the day, who feels better about how he's spent his last eight hours?
-Joan Borysenko
|
|
|
|
Our live experiences, fixed in aphorisms, stiffen into cold epigrams. Our heart's blood, as we write it, turns to mere dull ink.
-Francis H. Bradley
|
|
|
|
How many of us have been attracted to reason; first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism.
-Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
|
|
|
|
There is often more spiritual force in a proverb than in whole philosophical systems.
-Thomas Carlyle
|
|
|
|
Proverbs are short sentences drawn from long experience.
-Miguel de Cervantes
|
|
|
|
A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience.
-Miguel de Cervantes
|
|
|
|
I believe there's no proverb but what is true; they are all so many sentences and maxims drawn from experience, the universal mother of sciences.
-Miguel de Cervantes
|
|
|
|
I do not say a proverb is amiss when aptly and reasonably applied, but to be forever discharging them, right or wrong, hit or miss, renders conversation insipid and vulgar.
-Miguel de Cervantes
|
|
|
|
Most maxim-mongers have preferred the prettiness to the justness of a thought, and the turn to the truth; but I have refused myself to everything that my own experience did not justify and confirm.
-Lord Chesterfield
|
|
|
|
Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism.
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge
|
|
|
|
What is a epigram? A dwarfish whole. Its body brevity, and wit its soul.
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge
|
|
|
|
No people require maxims so much as the American. The reason is obvious: the country is so vast, the people always going somewhere, from Oregon apple valley to boreal New England, that we do not know whether to be temperate orchards or sterile climate.
-Edward Dahlberg
|
|
|
|
Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.
-Denis Diderot
|
|
|
|
What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes? Take fifty of our current proverbial sayings -- they are so trite, so threadbare, that we can hardly bring our lips to utter them. None the less they embody the concentrated experience of the race and the man who orders his life according to their teaching cannot go far wrong.
-Norman Douglas
|
|
|
|
In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.
-George Eliot
|
|
|
|
For proverbs are the pith, the proprieties, the proofs, the purities, the elegancies, as the commonest so the commendablest phrases of a language. To use them is a grace, to understand them a good.
-John Florio
|
|
|
|
A proverb is much matter distilled into few words.
-Richard Buckminster Fuller
|
|
|
|
A collections of anecdotes and maxims is the greatest of treasures for the man of the world, for he knows how to intersperse conversation with the former in fit places, and to recollect the latter on proper occasions.
-Johann von Goethe
|
|
|
|
Don't you go believing in sayings, Picotee: they are all made by men, for their own advantages. Women who use public proverbs as a guide through events are those who have not ingenuity enough to make private ones as each event occurs.
-Thomas Hardy
|
|
|
|
Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them.
-Aldous Huxley
|
|
|
|
He may justly be numbered among the benefactors of mankind, who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may early be impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to occur habitually to the mind.
-Samuel Johnson
|
|
|
|
They are like the clue in the labyrinth, or the compass in the night.
-Joseph Joubert
|
|
|
|
You cannot eat your cake and have it.
-James Joyce, Ulysses, 1922
|
|
|
|
A proverb is not a proverb to you until life has illustrated it.
-John Keats
|
|
|
|
An epigram is only a wisecrack that's played at Carnegie Hall.
-Oscar Levant
|
|
|
|
He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close, and rendering it portable.
-Thomas Babington Macaulay
|
|
|
|
Maxims are the condensed good sense of nations.
-James Mackintosh
|
|
|
|
All maxims have their antagonist maxims; proverbs should be sold in pairs, a single one being but a half truth.
-William Mathews
|
|
|
|
Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.
-W. Somerset Maugham
|
|
|
|
Maxims and aphorisms, let us remember that wisdom is the true salt of literature, and the books that are most nourishing are richly stored with it, and that is the main object to seek in reading books.
-John Morley
|
|
|
|
They are the guiding oracles which man has found out for himself in that great business of ours, of learning how to be, to do, to do without, and to depart.
-John Morley
|
|
|
|
A proverb is good sense brought to a point.
-John Morley
|
|
|
|
There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.
-Vladimir Nabokov
|
|
|
|
The aphorism in which I am the first master among Germans, are the forms of eternity; my ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book -- what everyone else does not say in a book.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
|
|
|
|
In the mountains the shortest route is from peak to peak, but for that you must have long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks: and those to whom they are spoken should be big and tall of stature.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
|
|
|
|
As the Arab proverb says, The dog barks and the caravan passes. After having dropped this quotation, Mr. Norpois stopped to judge the effect it had on us. It was great; the proverb was known to us: it had been replaced that year among men of high worth by this other: Whoever sows the wind reaps the storm, which had needed some rest since it was not as indefatigable and hardy as, Working for the King of Prussia.
-Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, vol. II. Within a Budding Grove, 1918
|
|
|
|
Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing remains to be said.
-Jean Rostand
|
|
|
|
A proverb is one man's wit and all men's wisdom.
-John Russell
|
|
|
|
Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.
-George Santayana
|
|
|
|
An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog.
-Friedrich Von Schlegel
|
|
|
|
Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones on hand do more to produce a happy life than the volumes we can't find.
-Seneca (Seneca the Elder)
|
|
|
|
The proverb is something musty.
-William Shakespeare
|
|
|
|
It is the nature of aphoristic thinking to be always in a state of concluding; a bid to have the final word is inherent in all powerful phrase-making.
-Susan Sontag
|
|
|
|
Although none of the rules for becoming more alive is valid, it is healthy to keep on formulating them.
-Susan Sontag
|
|
|
|
A short saying often contains much wisdom.
-Sophocles
|
|
|
|
The Republicans stroke platitudes until they purr like epigrams.
-Adlai Stevenson
|
|
|
|
Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity.
-Robert Louis Stevenson
|
|
|
|
Roses grow on thorns and honey wears a sting.
-Isaac Watts
|
|
|
|
He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram on his tombstone.
-Oscar Wilde
|
|
|
|
In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude. It makes the whole world kin.
-Oscar Wilde
|
|
Books about Proverbial Wisdom
