- English translation
Better to have your veins severed than to break off the kindness people are used to receiving from you.
- Literal wording
The cutting of the veins, and not the cutting of the customs.
- Meaning and lesson
The saying ranks loss of life below the shame of abandoning a habit of doing good. Once a person has accustomed others to their help, hospitality, or gifts, stopping is treated as a betrayal so serious that dying would be the lesser evil. The severed veins are a hyperbolic image of death, not a literal or approving reference to self-harm.
It works as an exhortation to constancy in generosity, not as a general defence of tradition or routine. The contrast between two kinds of cutting, of veins and of established kindness, stresses that a benefactor's reliability matters, and that withdrawing expected goodwill wounds honour and those who depended on it.
- When it is used
Fits moments when someone feels bound to continue a generosity others have come to rely on, even at great personal cost, or when urging a person not to abruptly withdraw support people have grown used to receiving from them.
Cite or copy proverb
How this record reached us: Editorially sourced.
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