List of Best Proverbs Famous Sayings in English

Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is possible that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never had much temptation to be human beings.

-George Orwell

When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.

- George Santayana

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

- John R. Wooden

The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man.

- Euripides

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.

- E. B. White

My father always said there are four things a child needs: plenty of love, nourishing food, regular sleep, and lots of soap and water. After that, what he needs most is some intelligent neglect.

-Ivy Baker Priest

Happiness is always a by - product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it.

-Robertson Davies

I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable.

- Joseph Addison

The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them.

-Alan B. Watts

People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering.

-Saint Augustine Quotation

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.

- Native American Download or Share Images

A bow that is bent too far will break.

Italian

A healthy woman is a successful woman.

French Download or Share Images

A mile walked with a friend has only one hundred steps.

Russian Download or Share Images

The milk of black goats and white goats is all the same.

Hebrew Download or Share Images

Enjoy your little while the fool seeks for more.

- Spanish Download or Share Images

Every man rides his own hobby.

German Sayings in English Download or Share Images

War does not determine who is right, only who is remaining.

Finnish Download or Share Images

A gentle breeze blowing in the right direction is better than a pair of strong oars.

Spanish

Caution is the parent of delicate beer-glasses.

- Dutch Phrase

Beauty is but dross it honesty be lost.

- Dutch

A favour ill placed is great waste.

French

A gift is better than a promise.

- American Phrase

Always take an emergency leisurely.

- Chinese

Better lose your labour than your time in idleness.

- Dutch

An old flag is an honour to its captain.

- Italian

Every fox likes a henroost.

- Italian

While the grass grows, the steed starves.

- Italian

A man must despise himself before others will.

- Chinese

A man without money is like a ship without sails.

- Dutch

Better be the head of a lizard than the tail of a dragon.

- Italian

Even the smallest spark shines brightly in darkness.

- Latin

Every time an old man dies it is as if a library has burnt down.

- African

Different times different manners.

- Italian

Beware of the dog himself, his shadow does not bite.

- Danish

Communicate more with yourself than you do with others.

-Danish

A still sow eats up all the draff.

- Dutch

Before you flare up at anyone's faults, take time to count ten of your own.

- American

Be gay today, for tomorrow you may die.

- American

Do good to a knave, and pray God he may not do the same to thee.

- Danish

Fair exchange is no robbery.

- English

An art requires a whole man.

- French

During the dry season it is better to befriend the owner of the pirogue.

- African

A little stream drives a great mill.

- Italian

At the end of the game you'll see who's the winner.

- Italian

Examine well the counsel that favours your desire.

- English

A great fortune depends on luck, a small one on diligence.

- Chinese

Give the wise man a hint and leave him to act.

- Italian

Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.

- English

Damage suffered makes you knowing, but seldom rich.

- Danish

Faith and dishonesty are other words for uselessness.

- Chinese

Far from court, far from care.

- English

Everyone speaks well of the bridge which carries him over.

- Chinese

A good beginning is a halfway a battle won.

- African

A chicken with beautiful plumage does not sit in a corner.

- African

Matches may be made in heaven, but they are sold down here.

- American

Childhood should be happy and carefree.

- American

A great talker may be no fool, but he is one who relies on him.

- American

Friendship is an empty word if it only works one way.

- American

A mill cannot grind with the water that is past.

- Italian

Deceit is in haste, but honesty can wait a fair leisure.

- Danish

A pair of light shoes is not all that is needed for dancing.

- Danish

A dimple in the chin, your living comes in; a dimple in the cheek, your living to seek.

English

Defeat is never a bitter brew until one agrees to swallow it.

- Chinese

Draw a cake to satisfy one's hunger.

- Chinese

Fire that is surrounded by elders cannot burn you.

- African

Eagles do not breed doves.

- Dutch

Do as I say, not as I do.

- English

Every fresh banana leaf should eventually become a dry banana leaf.

- African

Boast not of tomorrow, for you know not what the day may bring forth.

- American

Coming events cast their shadows before.

- American

Great scholars are not the shrewdest men.

- French

Fouls invent fashions and wise men follow them.

- French

Every one bears his cross.

- French

A good burgundy does a lot for women, especially when men drink it.

- French

Time ripens all things; no man is born wise.

- Miguel de Cervantes

Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.

-Alice Walker

A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.

- Carl Sandburg

Character is much easier kept than recovered.

-Thomas Paine

Never let yesterday use up too much of today.

-Will Rogers

All would live long, but none would be old.

- Benjamin Franklin

The majority of men are bundles of beginnings.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

-Henry David Thoreau

If you can't make it better, you can laugh at it.

-Erma Bombeck

Do well and you will have no need for ancestors.

-Voltaire

A halo has to fall only a few inches to be a noose.

-Anonymous

Growth demands a temporary surrender of security.

-Gail Sheehy

Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch.

-Walt Whitman

A man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies.

-Oscar Wilde

Know how sublime a thing is to suffer and be strong.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone.

-Henrik Ibsen

The childhood shows the man, as morning shows the day.

- John Milton

Education is the best provision for the journey to old age.

-Aristotle

Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint you can at it.

-Danny Kaye

It is extraordinary how extraordinary the ordinary person is.

- George F Will

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

- George Santayana

The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune.

-Plutarch

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.

-Muhammad Ali

To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.

-Mark Twain

Never be haughty to the humble; never be humble to the haughty.

- Jefferson Davis

The future you shall know when it has come; before then forget it.

- Aeschylus

The most important question in the world is, "Why is the child crying?"

- Alice Walker

If you can give your son or daughter only one gift, let it be enthusiasm.

-Bruce Barton

Life is an echo. What you send out-you get back. What you give-you get.

-Anonymous

Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.

- Robert Louis Stevenson

Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.

- Josh Billings

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

-Samuel Butler

The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.

-David Russell

One's own thought is one's world. What a person thinks is what he becomes.

- Maitri Upanishad

A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.

- G. K. Chesterton

It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father.

-Pope John XXIII

A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.

-Albert Schweitzer

Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

- Samuel Butler

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

-H. L. Mencken

You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.

- Franklin P. Adams

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do.

-Moliere

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good and not quite all the time.

- George Orwell

Be grateful for luck. Pay the thunder no mind-listen to the birds. And don't hate nobody.

-Eubie Blake

We must learn to walk before we can run.

- English

Love is an excuse for its own faults.

Italian Download or Share Images

The drunk ones will sober up, but the mad ones will not clever up.

Bengali Download or Share Images

To deceive a diplomat speak the truth, he has no experience with it.

Greek Download or Share Images

Behind the gentle barb lies the deadly barb.

Haitian Download or Share Images

Were every one to sweep before his own house, every street would be clean.

Dutch Download or Share Images

Never refuse a good offer.

British Download or Share Images

It is the constant and determined effort that breaks down resistance and sweeps away all obstacles.

- Claude M. Bristol

I dreamed a thousand new paths. . . I woke and walked my old one.

Chinese

He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool, shun him; He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is a child, teach him. He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep, wake him. He who knows, and knows that he knows, is wise, follow him.

Persian

A kola nut is small, but it is more important that it goes round to each person and not that it fills the stomach.

- African

A wound given by a word is many times harder to cure than that which is given by the sword.

- African

Children will tell you what they do, men what they think, and older people what they have seen and heard.

- Gypsy

A monkey remains a monkey, though dressed in silk.

- Spanish

An empty stomach will not listen to anything.

- Spanish

As you make your bed so you must lie upon it.

- Spanish

Many things grow in the garden that were never sown there.

- Spanish

Trust not your gossip to a priest who has been a friar.

- Spanish

A bad day never hath a good night.

- Spanish

Each to his own and God watching over everyone.

- Spanish

Desire of God and desire of man are two.

Bengali Download or Share Images

Dogs that bark at a distance bite not at hand.

- Dutch Download or Share Images *

Wait horse for green grass.

Bulgarian Download or Share Images

He who believes in dreams feeds on wind.

Bulgarian Download or Share Images

Ambition and fleas jump high.

- German Download or Share Images

A person who talks about his inferiors hasn't any.

Hawaiian Download or Share Images

Hooting all right and sleeping all day, doesn't make an owl wise.

African Download or Share Images

Each day provides its own gifts.

American Download or Share Images

A chicken is hatched even from such a well-sealed thing as an egg.

Chinese Download or Share Images

He who doesn't open his eyes when he buys must still open his purse to pay.

Danish Download or Share Images

Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.

- Dutch Download or Share Images

An empty barrel makes the most noise.

English Download or Share Images

He who sowed wind, reaps a typhoon.

Filipino Download or Share Images

The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss.

- Thomas Carlyle Download or Share

The wolf knows what the ill beats thinks.

French Download or Share Images

A little spark kindles a great fire.

- German Download or Share Images

He pours oil on the fire.

Hungarian Download or Share Images

Any water in the desert will do.

Indian Download or Share Images

If a man fools me once, shame on him; if he fools me twice, shame on me.

Irish Download or Share Images

A man of words and not of deeds Is like a garden full of weeds.

Italian Download or Share Images

Deceive the rich and powerful if you will, but don't insult them.

Japanese Download or Share Images

Those who are nourished by hope live ever in suspense, and enjoy not life.

Latin Download or Share Images

Those who know how to praise also know how to lie.

Albanian Download or Share Images

As mills require two stones, so friendship requires two heads.

Armenian Download or Share Images

Your own friend, and your father's friend, forsake not.

Biblical Download or Share Images

The dog does not catch further that its leash.

Bengali Download or Share Images

The poor eat meat when they bite their tongues.

Brazilian Download or Share Images

Unfenced garden - fenced in desert.

Bulgarian Download or Share Images

If the best man's faults were written on his forehead, it would make him pull his hat over his eyes.

Gaelic Download or Share Images

Poison is poison though it comes in a golden cup.

British Download or Share Images

It is usually dark below the candlestick.

Czech Download or Share Images

Frogs get lost in lakes.

Cambodian Download or Share Images

Collect the water while it rains.

Myanmar  Download or Share Images

It is the wife who knows her husband.

Ghanaian Download or Share Images

Rain does not stay in the sky.

Finnish Download or Share Images

To one who does not know, a garden is a forest.

Ethiopia Download or Share Images

He that boasts of his own knowledge proclaims his ignorance.

Eskimo Download or Share Images

He who chatters with you will chatter about you.

Egyptian Download or Share Images

Never be afraid to cry. It will free your mind of sorrowful thoughts.

Hopi Download or Share Images

The winter will ask what we did all summer.

Gypsy Download or Share Images

The riverside monkey is apt to be blamed for every twig found in the river.

Igbo Download or Share Images

Prepare your proof before you argue.

Israeli Download or Share Images

Be sure to send a lazy man for the angel of death.

Jewish Download or Share Images

The eyes can do a thousand things that the fingers can’t.

Iranian Download or Share Images

There is life in the rain.

Hawaiian Download or Share Images

A man loves his own shortcomings.

Kashmiri Download or Share Images

Keep your ears open.

Klingon Download or Share Images

Man is like a bird: a bird can fly higher and higher, but only if its wings continue to move without stopping.

Hebrew Download or Share Images

The crab that walks too far falls into the pot.

Haitian Download or Share Images

The thief hates the moon.

Korean Download or Share Images

Beautiful day, a gift for the traveller.

Indonesian Download or Share Images

A sitting crow starves.

Icelandic Download

Guests bring good luck with them.

Kurdish Download or Share

Cooked food is not sold for goats.

Kikuyu Download or Share

If all the bees made honey, there would be enough for even gypsies to eat.

Greek Download or Share

Quotes List

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater.

- William Hazlitt Download or Share

With self-discipline most anything is possible.

-Theodore Roosevelt Download or Share

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

Sir Francis Bacon Download or Share

When people keep telling you that you can't do a thing, you kind of like to try it.

-Margaret Chase Smith Download or Share

Success without honor is an unseasoned dish; it will satisfy your hunger, but it won't taste good.

- Joe Paterno Download or Share

God not only plays dice, he throws them in the corner where you can't see them.

- Stephen Hawking Download or Share

I have in irrepressible desire to live till I can be assured that the world is a little better for my having lived in it.

- Abraham Lincoln Download or Share

Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you.

- Satchel Paige Download or Share

Don't hurry, don't worry. You're here for a short visit. So be sure to stop and smell the flowers.

-Walter Hagen Download or Share

Riches do not consist in the possession of treasures, but in the use made of them.

- Napoleon Bonaparte Download or Share

Taking joy in life is a woman's best cosmetic.

- Rosalind Russell Download or Share

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.

- Oscar Wilde Download or Share

Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.

- Auguste Rodin Download or Share

In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these.

- Paul Harvey Download or Share

May you live all the days of your life.

- Jonathan Swift Download or Share

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this: man's being unable to sit still and quiet in a room alone.

-Blaise Pascal Download or Share

A person will be called to account on judgment Day for every permissible thing he might have enjoyed but did not.

- Tbe Talmud Download or Share

Live as long as you can. Die when you can't help it.

- James Brown Download or Share

The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.

- William Wordsworth Download or Share

One of the secrets of a long and fruitful life is to forgive everybody everything every night before you go to bed.

Bernard Mannes Baruch Download or Share

Live simply, that others may simply live.

- Mobandas Gandhi Download or Share

The trouble with quotes about death is that 99.999 percent of them are made by people who are still alive.

- Joshua Bruns Download or Share

This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds. To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance. A lifetime is a flash of lightning in the sky. Rushing by, like a torrent down a steep mountain.

- Buddha Quotes Download or Share

Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.

- Mark Twain Download or Share

In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.

- Eleanor Roosevelt Download or Share

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

- Sir Francis Bacon Download or Share

Death-the last sleep? No, it is the final awakening.

- Sir Walter Scott Download or Share

In an artist's life, death is perhaps not the most difficult thing.

-Vincent van Gogh Download or Share

You are never too old to be what you might have been.

- George Eliot Download or Share

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

-Leonardo da Vinci Download or Share

If I knew I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself.

-Mickey Mantle Download or Share

Live so that you wouldn't be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.

-Will Rogers Download or Share

Lord, how the day passes! It's like a life-so quickly when we don't watch it and so slowly if we do.

- John Steinbeck Download or Share

Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.

- Epicurus Download or Share

The mere process of growing old together will make the slightest acquaintance seem a bosom friend.

- Logan Pearsall Smith Download or Share

Who does not grow, declines.

-Rabbi Hillel Download or Share

People-some good, some bad, but in the long run we come out even.

- Jan Hittle Download or Share

Behind every sweaty face of a cattle rustler is a story of determination and courage.

- African

If only I may grow: firmer, simpler-quieter, warmer.

- Dag Hammarskjold Download or Share

It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goetbe Download or Share

We boil at different degrees.

-Phrase by Ralph Waldo Emerson Download or Share

Growth is the only evidence of life.

- John Henry Newman Download or Share

Time is the wisest counselor.

-Pericles Download or Share

I am never afraid of what I know.

- Anna Sewell Download or Share

Life is an adventure in forgiveness.

-Norman Cousins Download or Share

The future comes one day at a time.

-Dean Acheson Download or Share

Live a life as a monument to your soul.

- Ayn Rand

We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.

- Charles Bukowski Download or Share

Short Sayings in English

I can resist everything except temptation.

- Oscar Wilde Download or Share

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

- Abraham Lincoln

This is the first test of a gentleman: his respect for those who can be of no possible value to him.

-William Lyon Phelps

One reason why birds and horses are not unhappy is because they are not trying to impress other birds and horses.

-Dale Carnegie

If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.

-Rabindranath Tagore

If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.

-Lin Yutang

Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death.

- James F. Byrnes

I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

- Sir Walter Besant

Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is. How awful to be caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self.

-Millicent Fenwick

Acting childish seems to come naturally, but acting like an adult, no matter how old we are, just doesn't come easy to us.

-Lily Tomlin

Men occassionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry on as if nothing had happened.

-Sir Winston Churchill

This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.

-William Shakespeare

The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else do it wrong, without comment.

-T. H. White

Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes of which all men have some.

-Charles Dickens

The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.

-Henri Frederic Amiel

A birthday is a good time to begin anew: throwing away the old habits, as you would old clothes, and never putting them on again.

- Bronson Alcott

A man's heart away from nature becomes hard; lack of respect for growing, living things soon leads to a lack of respect for humans too.

-Luther Standing Bear

Contemplate thy powers, contemplate thy wants and thy connections; so shalt thou discover the duties of life, and be directed in all thy ways.

- Akhenaton

If there is anything we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

- Famous Sayings by Carl Jung

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.

-Henry David Thoreau

To say yes, you have to sweat and roll up your sleeves and plunge both hands into life up to the elbows. It's easy to say no, even if it means dying.

- Jean Anouilb

If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.

-Socrates