Arabic proverbs

Do not betray the one who trusted you, even if treachery comes naturally to you.

The saying addresses someone entrusted with another person's confidence and tells him not to betray it. The opening negative is read as a prohibition, so the verb works as a command rather than a report of past conduct. The conditional clause concedes a treacherous disposition in the listener, yet holds that his nature does not license disloyalty.

What does poor-looking soil matter when God is the one who provides?

The saying teaches that poor-looking material conditions do not by themselves determine whether a person can live or find a livelihood. Sustenance may come even from land, goods, or circumstances that seem barren, humble, or unpromising.

One stroke from a master is worth a thousand, even when it misses.

A single action by a true expert carries more worth than countless attempts by unskilled people. Skill shows in the quality and precision of each movement, so one practiced stroke outweighs a thousand strokes by lesser hands; the thousand is a count of efforts, not a sum of money.

The Sufi way can lead even a rebel back to obedience.

At its core, the saying praises the discipline of the Sufi path, the way of spiritual training rather than simply any technique, as a force able to restrain a wayward person and guide them back. Its practices are imagined as firm enough to curb someone who has strayed into wrongdoing.

The naked never have to bother with soap and laundry.

A person with no clothes has nothing to launder, so the labor and cost of soap never touch them. The saying points to a hidden benefit of lack: whoever does not own a thing is also free of the cares and chores that come with owning it.

Tongue of mine, if not for you, the back of my neck would never have taken that slap.

Addressing both their own tongue and the nape of their neck, the speaker blames the tongue as the true culprit: the slap on the nape, a blow of disgrace more than of pain, landed only because of something unwisely said. The blame falls inward rather than on whoever delivered the slap.

Anyone who toys with a snake is bound to be bitten.

Figuratively, deliberately engaging with a person or thing known to be harmful invites predictable injury. It stresses that the danger is foreseeable, not mere bad luck, because one has chosen to approach what is characteristically damaging.

It's a hard time, and it will pass.

The saying treats hardship as a passing condition rather than a permanent state. It reminds a person in distress that the present trouble, however severe, carries its own end, and that patient endurance is the right response while it lasts. Its wording reflects spoken rather than formal Arabic.

Asked why it kept making off with soap, the crow replied, "I can't help it; spite is simply how I'm made."

The saying portrays a crow that steals soap, an object it can neither eat nor wash with. When challenged, the bird offers no practical reason and simply admits that causing harm is part of its makeup. The theft is pointless except as an expression of the crow's character.

Let your enemy see you go by hungry, but never let him see you go by in rags.

An empty stomach stays hidden, but shabby, poorly clothed dress is plain to anyone who looks. The saying advises putting outward presentation first when crossing paths with hostile people, not when visiting them. Private suffering can be endured quietly, while visible signs of want give an adversary something to mock or exploit.

Throw one brick after another, and the fight never dies down.

The image is of bricks hurled one after another in a brawl, not bricks laid in building. Big quarrels rarely erupt all at once. They grow from small blows answered by more small blows, and each minor retaliation keeps the hostility alive and pushes it toward something much larger than its trivial beginning.

Aunt, go on telling me you're my aunt, while the smoke of your kitchen has blinded my eyes.

The speaker rebukes a maternal aunt who repeatedly invokes their family tie while treating the speaker badly and making them prepare food in her smoke-filled kitchen. The coined verb khalkhalīnī plays on the word for aunt, mocking her insistence on kinship. Her claims of closeness bring neither kindness nor relief from humiliating labor.

Set your load down before exhaustion sets in, and take it up again before rest grows too comfortable.

The saying teaches pacing through the image of carrying a load: set it down to rest while strength remains. Pushing on until fatigue takes over can injure the body or leave a person too spent to finish at all. The image may apply to figurative burdens too.

Begging is in the blood.

The saying claims that begging, in the sense of habitually asking others for gifts, money or favors, springs from a person's inborn character rather than from real need. On this view, someone so disposed keeps soliciting whatever their means, even when they are not poor.

Marry a woman from a good family, even if a humble reed mat is all she owns.

The saying advises a man looking for a wife to give priority to the decent family and good upbringing behind a woman rather than to her wealth. A bride whose household owns nothing more than a simple floor mat, an image of poverty, is still the better choice if she comes from respectable, well-mannered people.

Right in the middle of the crush, they choose to circumcise the blind man with the swollen hernia.

The saying mocks a mistake of timing. Just when a place is packed and everyone is pressed, an unnamed 'they' decide to circumcise a blind man with a hernia, the most awkward and painstaking job imaginable, hard enough even in calm conditions. The verb means circumcision here, not ritual purification.

Just like a fish, which dies the moment it leaves the water.

The saying describes someone who stays bound to a thing and never leaves it. The bond is pictured as so total that separation would feel like losing what keeps them alive, just as a fish depends on water.

All they have is a closet without a door, and still they pray to be shielded from envious eyes.

The saying mocks people who have almost nothing of value yet behave as if their belongings would make others envious. Here خزانة means a small room in a house, not a treasury: a single room without a door prompts a prayer against jealous neighbors, exposing inflated pride.

Patience can cure anything, but nothing can cure impatience.

The saying presents patience as a universal cure: every hardship has patience as its own remedy. Whatever comes, a person who can endure and wait it out will eventually manage it or gain the upper hand. The emphasis falls on steady endurance as the tool that makes every other difficulty treatable.

A great river is not made murky by a muddy side channel.

A person of real stature need not be unsettled by insults or provocations from someone regarded as petty or insignificant. The saying presents such attacks as too slight to disturb the dignity and composure of the greater person.

One man carries his own beard, so why should someone else be the one getting tired?

The saying imagines a man bearing his own beard, a load that is his alone and no real burden. The beard is simply a plain image of something personal, not a religious or status symbol. It then asks why a bystander should feel strained by it.

You who keep living creatures, care for them as anxiously as a mourner grieves.

Whoever takes animals into his keeping is urged to be gentle and attentive toward them, making sure they are regularly fed and watered. Having living creatures in one's charge is presented as a responsibility that calls for compassion rather than mere possession.

The cricket fell for a beetle and went wandering all over town with her, not knowing what to do with himself.

The saying pokes fun at a person who becomes infatuated with something or someone of little worth. The insect pairing is deliberately unglamorous: a lowly grasshopper or cricket, not some other creature, dotes on an equally humble beetle, which makes the passion look absurd.

He'd take being on top even if the top were a stake to be impaled on.

The saying mocks a craving for elevation so strong that the person would accept any perch, even one that would destroy them. The image is grim: the stake used for impalement, a brutal execution, and the joke is that they would welcome being raised on it.

Swing your legs only as far as your money pays for.

The saying ties enjoyment to payment. The image is of someone on a hired swing who may swing their legs only as long and as high as the fee they gave the swing's owner allows. Whoever pays little gets a short ride; whoever pays more is entitled to more.

You can tell the quality of anything by looking at it, except tobacco; that you only find out once it's burning in the pipe.

Most things can be sized up at a glance, with good and poor quality told apart by the eye alone. Tobacco is the exception: here دُخَّان means smoking tobacco, not smoke, and حَجَر is the pipe bowl, not a stone. Its worth stays hidden until packed into that bowl, lit, and tasted.

We've grown old in years, yet our good sense never reached its full measure.

The saying sets two kinds of growth side by side: years pile up on their own, but sound judgment does not automatically follow. The speakers admit they are fully grown, even old, yet their wisdom remains unfinished.

He's like a hedgehog: no one can hug him, and no one can kiss him.

The image is of a hedgehog, a spiny animal that nobody can hold close or kiss, because its quills hurt whoever tries; the point rests on the spines alone. Affection is impossible not because people lack goodwill but because the creature itself makes contact painful.

Your own finery may delight your wife, but treating her well and presenting her with dignity wins wider respect.

The saying contrasts a husband's personal display with care for his wife. In its husband-centred, potentially dated framing, it commends attentiveness to her as a more publicly valued sign of character than dressing impressively oneself.

One little spark can burn down the whole neighborhood.

The saying warns against dismissing small beginnings. Its fire image is figurative: a tiny spark looks harmless, yet left alone it can set an entire residential quarter ablaze, so what starts as a trifle may grow into widespread harm.

A good cook can feed a whole wedding party on one goose.

The saying celebrates competence as a multiplier of resources. A truly capable cook does not need a mountain of provisions; with know-how and careful planning, one modest bird becomes enough for an entire festive crowd. The picture is deliberate exaggeration, not a literal claim about portions or household thrift.

A rotten child brings curses down on his family.

A wretched, ill-mannered youngster does not suffer alone for his misconduct. The word for him literally means tar, used here as a label for worthlessness. His behavior draws curses onto the whole family, because people offended by him insult his relatives along with him.

A liar ends up with nothing but disgrace.

The saying holds that lying brings no real profit. Whatever a liar hopes to gain, the only portion that falls to him is a 'blackened face', a conventional Arabic image of shame and public disgrace, not of skin color. Once the truth comes out, the liar faces humiliation and a damaged reputation rather than any benefit.

Marrying into a family brings you standing, and when the match is a good one, your in-laws become your own kin.

The saying holds that becoming related through marriage, not descent by blood, is itself a source of honor, worth, and social esteem. Joining another household through a wedding adds to a person's standing, so the alliance is valued beyond the couple themselves.

When hungry they raise a din, and when full they sing.

The saying portrays people who make a commotion when hungry and sing noisily when full: whatever their condition, they remain loud and disruptive.

Why should I empty out my lentils just to make room for your kebab?

Framed as an indignant question, the saying rejects the idea that someone with little should empty out what they have to serve another person's advantage. Humble lentils stand against prized kebab: even if the other's stake is far richer, the owner need not ruin a modest share for it.

A beast chews its cud only when it is sound and at ease.

The picture is of an unspecified female beast, its kind left unnamed. Bringing up swallowed food to chew it a second time is something an animal does only when it is sound and comfortable, so the act itself signals that it is in a fit state.

If someone does not value me highly, I will not give them even the smallest respect.

The saying calls for esteem to be returned in kind. Someone who withholds proper regard should not expect honor or regard from the person they slight.

At the water barrier, it's only the poor field hand who gets killed.

The image comes from old quarrels over irrigation, when one group blocked a small earthen channel barrier, not a large reservoir dam, to send water toward its own crops. Fights broke out there. The men who risked their lives were landless hired hands, not lazy farmers, while field owners stayed safely at home.

Buy the young one and you've robbed the whole market.

The saying celebrates the shrewdness of buying young. A young animal costs little at market, yet its best years are still ahead, while an older animal is already past its peak. The buyer who picks the young one pays a small price for what is still to come, so the deal feels almost like theft.

Every well has its drain right beside it.

Whatever comes in has an exit waiting for it. The saying pictures water drawn from a well and spilled on the ground, where a nearby drain or channel, not a second well or reservoir, carries it away. The image is economic: each gain is matched by some outlet through which it is spent.

Laughter with no cause behind it shows bad manners.

The saying holds that laughter needs a visible reason. Someone who laughs when nothing amusing has occurred is seen as careless of the people around them and of the setting. Here أدب means manners and proper upbringing, not literature, and the lapse is judged socially, saying nothing about the laugher's health or state of mind.

Press your own eye and feel it: what hurts you hurts others just the same.

The saying asks the listener to test an action on their own body before inflicting it on anyone else. Pressing a hand against your own eye shows at once how much it stings, and that feeling gauges what another person would suffer. The wording leaves unstated exactly what does the hurting, but the point is unchanged.

He's like the eggplant seller, who never gives his friend anything but the black ones.

The saying targets a person from whom nothing good ever seems to come. Whatever they hand over, whether a gift, a favor, or a remark, turns out to be something unpleasant or unwelcome, just as the seller's present is always the dark eggplant (called by a vernacular name in the saying).

Better to beat the funeral drum for a man than to have him idling at home.

The saying ranks two misfortunes and, in deliberate hyperbole, calls a man's death the lesser one. Hearing the frame drum and dirges of mourning for him would be easier to bear than watching him sit idle in the house, contributing nothing.

Find a mason who works for free, and you'll have him put up a hundred rooms.

When a mason will work without wages and the building materials cost nothing, a person who might have settled for a single room ends up ordering a hundred. The image shows how demand swells once every expense disappears.

Buying on credit will bankrupt even a merchant worth thousands.

A trader who keeps acquiring goods while postponing payment is quietly building a heap of obligations; he is the buyer and debtor here, not a seller extending credit. Any single deferred purchase may seem manageable, but together they can outgrow his resources. In the end even a merchant worth thousands can be driven into insolvency by what he owes.

Whoever has nothing to do ends up playing judge.

A person with nothing of his own to attend to has the time to listen to other people's complaints and quarrels, weigh them, and hand down a verdict. Freedom from work becomes the very thing that lets him step into the role of arbiter.

Haste leads to delays.

Acting too quickly can create mistakes, confusion, or overlooked steps that interrupt the work and require it to be done again.

Lend and you lose it; pay it back and you're the loser.

The saying warns against lending: whatever you hand over as a loan (salaf here means lending, not forebears) should be counted as gone, since you are unlikely ever to see it again. The rhyming pair salaf and talaf ties lending directly to ruin, giving the line a punchy, quotable shape.