Arabic proverbs

Nobody muzzles the ox that is pulling the plow.

The image comes from farm life. An ox pulling a plow through the field has no grain within reach, so there is no reason to strap a muzzle on it. The muzzle belongs to the animal trampling harvested grain on the threshing floor, where it could stop and eat.

He comes bearing Kulayb's head.

The saying points at a person who makes a show of something weighty he has done. His pride is out in the open, and the expression fixes attention on that display of satisfaction over a significant act he has performed.

Ride your best mare hard.

The saying advises putting your finest resource to hard use. The 'good one' here is the best-bred mare, and the closing verb means to exert her by riding hard. Such a mare can be pushed without harm and will carry her rider quickly to his goal.

Why all the dashing about with your skirts tucked up? She answered: I'm the one who holds the key to the corncob pile!

The saying mocks a person who rushes about, hem lifted to move faster, full of importance because of a responsibility that carries no real weight. The key guards only spent corncobs, the bare cobs kept as fuel, yet it is treated as a grand office, so the excitement is wildly out of proportion.

A mother with a child will find her way back home.

Someone who leaves after a quarrel or separation may still be expected to return when a powerful attachment draws them back. The saying expresses confidence that an emotional bond, or another compelling reason, can outweigh a temporary departure.

Make enemies of people, and you'll spend your nights awake.

Enmity is pictured as a burden that the one who creates it must carry. Once someone sets himself against others, the calm he gave up does not return; the sleepless night stands for a mind that can never stand down and must keep watching for whatever harm an opponent might do.

So long as you play the pipe and I beat the drum, we have plenty of long nights ahead of us.

The saying holds that one state of affairs inevitably brings another in its wake. Musicians who play pipe and drum at festivities cannot escape staying awake late, night after night, because that is simply what their work requires. The long nights are nights of working at celebrations, not nights of grief.

Tell a blind man that lamp oil has gone up, and he'll answer: "That's a treat I never needed anyway."

A rise in the cost of something matters only to those who depend on it. The blind man has no use for a lit lamp, so dearer lamp oil leaves him untouched. To him it is a fruit already dispensed with, an optional extra rather than a necessity.

At this rate the fast will never end and the holiday will never arrive.

The saying grumbles that a job is moving so sluggishly that, at this rate, it will never be finished. The speaker imagines the fasting month stretching on forever and the festival that should close it never arriving, a playful exaggeration aimed at people who are dawdling over their work.

Off like someone who just heard, 'Nimra, your brother Za'irab is dead!'

The saying describes someone rushing along at breakneck pace, refusing to stop, turn aside, or take notice of anything on the way. The hurry is total and blind, as if nothing exists except pressing forward.

In summertime, there is room on the mat for everyone.

The saying points out that crowding hardly matters in the hot season. When nights are warm, people can sleep outdoors in the open air, so a household never truly runs short of room for its members or visitors.

A girl's appearance changes as she grows up.

The saying observes that a girl's looks, especially whom she seems to take after, do not stay fixed. Her features may seem to shift as she moves through childhood and adolescence; the imagery concerns changing resemblance, not deception or multiple identities.

Stuck in place like a monkey tethered around its middle.

The saying describes a person who cannot leave where they are because circumstances hold them fast. Like a small monkey tethered by a band around its middle, they may shift about within a short range, but cannot run off; the rope always pulls them back.

The world belongs to God, and no person is another person's master.

This saying rebukes someone who acts as though other people exist to obey his wishes. In a religious frame, it reminds the arrogant that land and people belong to God, not to any individual, and that personal authority has moral limits.

Keep your mouth shut, and trouble is less likely to get in.

The saying advises restraint in speech. By remaining silent rather than volunteering words, a person may avoid unwelcome replies or consequences they would rather escape.

She offers her sympathy while secretly delighting in the loss.

The saying describes a person who presents herself as a mourner or comforter while actually taking pleasure in the misfortune of the one she visits. Both Arabic words are feminine participles, so it grammatically points at a woman; outward condolence covers inner gloating, exposing a contradiction between display and feeling.

Hurry or take your time, you'll both end up on the same ferry.

The proverb rests on the habit of river ferrymen who would not cross with a single passenger. They waited until the boat filled, then carried everyone over together. Whoever hurried to the bank and whoever strolled up late ended up sitting side by side on the same crossing.

Money earned honestly is never lost for good.

The proverb affirms that wealth obtained through permitted, honest means does not get lost. It expresses a firm conviction that what a person has rightfully earned is not destined to disappear.

They thrashed the garlic vendor, and it was the coriander vendor who messed himself.

The picture is of two market vendors: blows rain down on the one selling garlic, yet the one selling coriander is the one who loses control of his bowels. The image is deliberately crude and bodily. The person struck and the person who suffers the result are not the same.

Serve others, and in time others will serve you.

The saying states a general rule: service given freely is repaid in kind. A person who devotes effort to meeting others' needs builds a store of gratitude, and those same people become eager helpers in return, offering willing support rather than any literal servitude.

Like the cattle egret: snowy white to look at, but dirty in its ways.

The saying mocks a person who looks clean and respectable but whose habits or nature are foul. The cattle egret's bright white feathers stand for an attractive outward show, while its worm-eating diet, the source of its uncleanness, stands for the hidden dirtiness that the appearance conceals.

If your neighbor plants before you, make sure you water first.

When another person moves first in one stage of work, do not assume the result is settled. Respond promptly through another useful stage of effort that can still strengthen your own outcome.

If you duck before trouble, it will pass over you.

The saying advises yielding rather than meeting a dangerous event head-on. By figuratively lowering oneself, a person avoids becoming the target and lets an immediate threat pass.

A bad neighbor keeps count of what comes into the house, never of what goes out.

Envy is pictured here as one-sided bookkeeping. In the spiteful neighbor's private ledger, every gain a family receives is entered and begrudged, while the money that same family pays out simply never appears.

A price already reckoned is a price you'll dare to pay.

The proverb says that knowing a thing’s value or expected cost can make a bold or difficult action seem easier to undertake. Certainty about what is at stake lessens the hesitation created by uncertainty.

I brought up a dog, and it turned on me and bit me.

The saying captures being repaid with harm by someone you nurtured. The speaker raised a dog with care, only to have it turn on its keeper and bite. The wound stings more because it comes from one who owed kindness.

Any passing word can sway him one way or the other.

The saying pictures a person pushed around entirely by what others tell him. One remark draws him toward a position and the next pulls him back out of it. The wording is masculine, but the point applies to anyone. Having no firm judgment of their own, such a person shifts with whoever spoke last.

I sent someone off to fetch the one I was waiting for; he left as well, and he never came back to me either.

Someone is waiting for a person who should have returned quickly. To hurry things along, the speaker sends another person to fetch him, but the one sent also goes off and fails to return. Instead of ending the first absence, the speaker has simply added a second one to it.

Safe and prospering, prospering and safe.

The saying celebrates a doubly happy outcome: a person or venture has come through unharmed and has also come out ahead. Safety and good fortune are presented as wrapped inside each other, so neither is missing and the result is complete contentment.

Once you've burned my harvest, we are no longer neighbors.

The saying asserts that some injuries are too deep to forgive. The burned crops stand for a household's food and livelihood, so the image is of ruinous harm, not ordinary damage. Once a person has destroyed what others depend on to live, no neighborliness remains: the bond of trust and mutual care is gone, and pretending otherwise would be hollow.

Keep feeding scraps of kindling under your water, and it will warm up.

The saying urges a person to look after their own concerns and keep working at them, even with meager resources. The image is of heating water with stray bits of straw and broken twigs rather than real firewood; steady, modest attention is enough to bring a situation gradually into good order.

We've had our fill of carob, and now our legs have given way.

The speaker says they have already enjoyed the portion life allotted them, pictured as eating one's carob, a familiar fruit rather than a symbol of wealth or luxury. The bent leg is figurative, marking the body's weakening with age, not an injury. Together, the images say that one's prime has been used up.

When you're at someone else's mercy, you play by their rules.

The saying holds that a person who has lost control of their situation is no longer free to act on preference. It concerns the one overpowered, not the victor. Weakness, defeat, or dependence imposes its own terms, and someone in that position may end up doing things they would never choose if they had any real alternative.

No one can stop what God grants a person.

Within a religious view of events, the proverb says that a benefit or favor granted by God cannot be removed or withheld by another person’s opposition. Human resistance is presented as unable to overcome what the Creator has allotted.

A dog only plays the hero on its own doorstep.

The saying mocks a person whose boldness depends entirely on familiar surroundings. At home, under the protection of kin and supporters, such a person puts on a show of daring and skill, a display of bravado rather than mere cleverness, yet that confidence evaporates once the safety of home is gone.

Whoever brews poison is bound to get a taste of it himself.

The image is someone preparing poison who still cannot avoid a taste, whether from curiosity, a careless slip, or a smear left on a fingertip. The implied reasoning runs further: if even a poison-maker samples the brew, someone cooking something delicious will surely help himself. Applied this way, it excuses or expects small pilfering by people entrusted with others' goods.

If someone did not care for me when I was poor, their affection after I prosper is not sincere.

The saying distrusts affection that appears only after a person's circumstances improve. Someone who ignored or rejected a person in hardship cannot convincingly claim the same personal attachment once comfort, status, or abundant food arrives.

Trying to fix it, he only made it worse.

The image is of someone who reaches for kohl as a treatment for the eyes and ends up destroying her sight completely. The saying draws its force from the gap between an aim of healing and an outcome of total loss.

A hand-kiss may be a way of making someone the butt of a joke.

The proverb warns that a display of deference can be a calculated trick. What looks like humble respect may instead be intended to mislead a person and leave them unaware that they are being made a fool of.

Take the longer, level route instead of risking the steep shortcut.

The proverb recommends choosing the safer course even when it takes more time. A level, longer path is preferable to a shorter route whose difficulty could bring a fall or another setback.

He hadn't even proposed, yet he was gathering wood for the wedding feast and asking where to put the stoves.

The saying mocks a man who has not even asked for a bride yet already hauls in fuel for the wedding cooking and wonders where to set up the hearths, temporary stoves for the feast. A variant has him bargaining with the fritter-maker over wedding sweets instead; the image of eagerness skipping the essential first step is the same.

Shannah, Gannah and the clothesline: the whole matching set together.

The saying names Shannah and Gannah along with the washing line as one company of parties who belong with each other. Its point is that people who are well suited to one another have now come together in the same place.

An unlucky person will find a bone even in tripe.

The proverb describes someone so ill-fated that trouble finds them even where none should exist. Tripe is a soft, boneless food, so finding a bone in it is an absurd mishap; a variant names the sheep's fat tail, also boneless, with the same sense. The image stands for someone who stumbles over obstacles in the simplest situations.

If your chance at marriage is within reach, seize it—even if it means taking your sister’s husband.

In this traditional saying, “fortune” means a husband or marriage prospect rather than luck in general. It urges a woman to seize a marital opportunity quickly rather than let it pass her by.

A family's light is put out only by a good-for-nothing heir.

A person's good name and honored memory, built over a lifetime, are not lost by accident. What finally snuffs them out is a contemptible heir: a son or kinsman who is base, mean or feeble (not someone wailing), and whose ugly conduct undoes the respect the family once enjoyed.

Nobody cries out unless something truly hurts.

The saying holds that people do not cry out or complain without reason. When someone voices pain or grievance, there is usually a real hurt or wrong behind it, even if others cannot see it at first.

I don't love you, but I can't stand to be away from you either.

The saying describes being tied to something you do not actually like. The speaker admits to no affection for the person or thing, yet confesses being unable to break away. It captures dependence or habit that survives without real approval, a bond held together by need or familiarity rather than fondness.

He got away from the bear only to tumble into the death pit.

The saying describes a person who gets clear of one danger only to drop straight into a greater one. The relief of escaping is brief, and the new predicament proves deeper and harder to climb out of than the threat that came before.

My tear, I was saving you for my hour of trouble.

The speaker addresses their own tear as though it were a companion kept in reserve for a bad day. When trouble arrives and no helper can be found, weeping is the one relief still available, and the tear is called upon to come to the speaker's aid.

Once milk has curdled, it can never be fresh again.

The saying holds that some transformations run in one direction only. Once time or circumstance has reshaped something, whether a bond, a reputation, or a state of affairs, wishing or effort will not reverse the change. It counsels accepting the new reality instead of chasing a former condition that no longer exists.