- English translation
The force that trapped me is already preparing to trap you too.
- Literal wording
The one who tied me up is twisting a rope for you.
- Meaning and lesson
A person should not gloat over another’s hardship, because misfortune is not necessarily confined to its first victim. The same danger, authority, or turn of events may soon reach the onlooker as well.
The saying rebukes smugness by replacing a sense of safety with a warning of shared vulnerability. Its rope-and-binding image is figurative: it warns of comparable hardship, not an identical event, and treats another’s suffering as a reminder of one’s own exposure rather than an occasion for contempt.
- When it is used
Used to answer someone who mocks another’s setback or assumes they are immune to similar trouble. It cautions against schadenfreude and urges humility when hardship affects someone else, without predicting that the same event will happen to the mocker.
Cite or copy proverb
How this record reached us: Editorially sourced.
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