Motivational Quotes

Proverbs

Don't be sweet, lest you be eaten up; don't be bitter, lest you be spewed out.

- Jewish Proverb

Best Quotes about Proverbs

When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.

Chinese Proverb

To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.

Chinese Proverb

It is not enough to aim; you must hit.

Italian Proverb

I can't make head or tail of Life. Love is a fine thing, Art is a fine thing, Nature is a fine thing; but the average human mind and spirit are confusing beyond measure. Sometimes I think that all our learning is the little learning of the maxim. To laugh at a Roman awe-stricken in a sacred grove is to laugh at something today.

Stevens, Wallace

Proverbs are mental gems gathered in the diamond fields of the mind.

Alger, William R.

Trumpet in a herd of elephants; crow in the company of cocks; bleat in a flock of goats.

Malayan Proverb

They are like the clue in the labyrinth, or the compass in the night.

Joubert, Joseph

A handful of patience is worth more than a bushel of brains.

Dutch Proverb

Speak the truth, but leave immediately after.

Slovenian Proverb

10.

Don't make use of another's mouth unless it has been lent to you.

Belgian Proverb

11.

A smiling face is half the meal.

Latvian Proverb

12.

Do not throw the arrow which will return against you.

Kurdish Proverb

13.

The best armor is to keep out of range.

Italian Proverb

14.

Do not remove a fly from your friend's forehead with a hatchet.

Chinese Proverb

15.

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.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

16.

When you drink the water, remember the spring.

Chinese Proverb

17.

If you bow at all, bow low.

Chinese Proverb

18.

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.

Dahlberg, Edward

19.

Buy on the rumor; sell on the news.

Wall Street Proverb

20.

If you believe everything you read, better not read.

Japanese Proverb

21.

The palest ink is better than the best memory.

Chinese Proverb

22.

A proverb is much matter distilled into few words.

Fuller, R. Buckminster

23.

If you scatter thorns, don't go barefoot.

Italian Proverb

24.

Examine what is said, not him who speaks.

Arab Proverb

25.

Drink nothing without seeing it; sign nothing without reading it.

Spanish Proverb

26.

A country can be judged by the quality of its proverbs.

German Proverb

27.

Make your bargain before beginning to plow.

Arab Proverb

28.

Wait until it is night before saying that it has been a fine day.

French Proverb

29.

What is a epigram? A dwarfish whole. Its body brevity, and wit its soul.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

30.

When you go to buy, use your eyes, not your ears.

Czech Proverb

31.

Praise youth and it will prosper.

Irish Proverb

32.

He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.

Chinese Proverb

33.

Take hold lightly; let go lightly. This is one of the great secrets of felicity in love.

Spanish Proverb

34.

Don't fall before you're pushed.

English Proverb

35.

Do not employ handsome servants.

Chinese Proverb

36.

Worries go down better with soup than without.

Jewish Proverb

37.

Whoever gossips to you will gossip about you.

Spanish Proverb

38.

What you don't see with your eyes, don't invent with your mouth.

Jewish Proverb

39.

Complain to one who can help you.

Yugoslav Proverb

40.

Better be ill spoken of by one before all than by all before one.

Scottish Proverb

41.

Keep five yards from a carriage, ten yards from a horse, and a hundred yards from an elephant; but the distance one should keep from a wicked man cannot be measured.

Indian Proverb

42.

You've got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was.

Irish Proverb

43.

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

44.

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.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

45.

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.

Florio, John

46.

A full cup must be carried steadily.

English Proverb

47.

Fall seven times, stand up eight.

Japanese Proverb

48.

A proverb is one man's wit and all men's wisdom.

Russell, John

49.

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.

Baker, Nicholson

50.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

Chinese Proverb