Arabic proverbs

“If leaving is your threat, then go ahead—I will be spared your fart.”

The saying answers a threatened departure with open approval. Rather than treating the other person’s leaving as a loss, the speaker says it would bring relief from that person’s offensive presence or behavior; the deliberately crude image makes the reply openly insulting and confrontational.

Win your summer harvest with the plough, not with the sickle.

The saying uses the verb for going out to gather grain and fodder at summer harvest, not for passing the summer. It teaches that a plentiful yield is earned at the start: whoever wants a full store should plough well and sow with care, because the crop is decided long before anyone picks up a harvesting blade.

“What a blessing, mosque: this happened through you, not through me.”

The image is of someone addressing a mosque whose closure supplies an excuse: the outcome arose from the mosque, rather than from the speaker’s own failure or choice. The speaker welcomes this as release from blame and embarrassment; the mosque reference belongs to the proverb’s imagery.

Says the hen to her mistress: Stop holding your feed over us, we scratched for every bit of it ourselves.

The hen answers the woman who keeps her, refusing to have the grain she eats held over her. The verb literally means bragging, but here it means throwing a favor in someone's face. Whatever she has eaten, she insists, came from her own scratching in the dirt, so it is no gift deserving gratitude.

Settle the terms when the seed is sown, and you will rest easy when the grain is piled up.

The saying recommends fixing the terms of any joint undertaking at its very beginning, at the seed grain kept for sowing, while nothing has yet been gained. When each party knows its share and obligations before the seed goes into the ground, dividing the harvested heap on the threshing floor later becomes calm and simple.

That hand takes but never gives back.

The saying describes a person whose hand only ever receives. Such a person readily accepts money, goods, or favors but resists handing anything over. The classic case is a borrower who keeps postponing repayment. The fault it names is habitual withholding and stalling, not a single lapse.

When the shares were dealt out, I took my pile along with the rest. 'Poor thing,' people said. 'It's been that way since the day I was born,' I told them.

The saying pictures a sharing-out of fortunes in which the speaker, who is a woman, gets her 'heap', meaning her allotted lot in life, like everyone else. When onlookers pity her, she replies that her bad luck dates 'from my day', that is, since birth. It is not the result of this one distribution.

He counts for nothing, one way or the other.

The saying describes someone who carries no weight at all. Such a person is neither inside a matter nor in charge of it, neither a participant nor a responsible party. Whatever happens, they are left out of the reckoning because nobody thinks to count them.

Envy wears out the person who carries it.

The saying holds that envy punishes the person who harbors it. Someone who keeps measuring their own life against the blessings of others never finds peace, because resentment over another's good fortune keeps renewing itself and leaves them troubled and worn down, an inner strain rather than ordinary tiredness.

He can raise the one laid low and topple the one who stands tallest.

The saying holds that God's power has no limits: He can lift up someone worn down by illness to extreme weakness and close to death, and just as easily bring down someone healthy, strong, and proud. The images describe people, not buildings, and neither condition is permanent.

Only the worst of the herd is left at the troughs.

The proverb laments an unjust outcome: the good are taken away while the bad endure. Its picture is a row of feeding troughs where only the poorest of the cattle are still found, standing for a place or group left holding its least worthy members.

Like a camel that kicks its leg out behind as it walks: he lays bare everyone else's flaws but cannot see his own.

The saying mocks the faultfinder who points out what is wrong with everyone else yet never notices their own defects. The camel is the picture: it flings a leg out behind as it walks, a flaw in its own gait rather than a kick aimed at anyone, and, unable to see it, assumes its stride is flawless.

Whatever you plant is what you will harvest.

This proverb uses farming imagery to say that outcomes follow from actions. Whatever a person plants, they will eventually bring in, so their deeds determine what they later receive. Nothing else grows from the seed they chose.

The ravenous woman passed herself off as a pregnant woman with cravings.

The saying ridicules a greedy person who disguises plain appetite as a legitimate need. Its image is a ravenous woman, her hunger likened to famine, who claims the cravings of pregnancy, since such cravings are customarily indulged, and so obtains whatever she wants.

Your life isn't something to throw away.

The saying treats a person's lifespan as something precious that should not be scattered or spent carelessly; it concerns throwing one's life away, not money or general thrift. It cautions against rushing into an undertaking that carries real danger, urging the listener to weigh the risk before acting.

Self-interest is a kind of disease.

The saying treats a hidden personal aim as an inner affliction. The key word can mean purpose or interest in general, but here it leans toward a self-serving aim. Like an illness, it bends a person's judgment and conduct. It explains why someone might do something unseemly or support an undeserving person: a private interest is quietly steering them.

A person once bitten by a snake becomes frightened at the sight of its tail.

After being hurt by something, a person may react with intense wariness whenever they encounter anything connected with the earlier danger. The experience makes fear and precaution arise quickly.

I told my luck, 'I'm just going out for a stroll.' It answered, 'Well, I'm not lame, so I'm coming too.'

The saying pictures bad luck as a companion who refuses to stay behind. The speaker, a woman by the grammar, tries to slip away for an ordinary outing with no ambition attached. Luck, meaning persistent misfortune, answers that it can walk and will come along. An unlucky person cannot escape misfortune, even in trivial pursuits.

So much wedding fuss, and the bride is a frog.

The saying mocks a great show of noise and excitement over something that does not merit it. A wedding brings crowds and bustle, all centred on the bride; picturing her as a frog shows that the whole celebration surrounds something unworthy of such attention. The frog is a crude jab at looks, used here as an image only.

A person used to public shame no longer tries to avoid it.

Repeated humiliation can blunt a person's sense of shame. Once disgrace has become familiar, the person may cease taking precautions to preserve dignity or reputation.

Your partner is never farther away than the feeding trough.

Someone who co-owns a beast with you is, in effect, always standing beside its feed trough, the manger of the saying. However far away he seems, he can turn up without warning to demand that the animal be sold or that you account for how it has been kept.

Earn through trading rather than by going into paid service.

The saying ranks buying and selling above working for wages. Within its outlook, trade lets a person keep charge of their own labor, while hiring oneself out places them under another's direction and may oblige them to carry out tasks they find distasteful.

It's the people who make a place, not the building.

A dwelling or locality takes its value from the people who occupy it. The word sirr, often rendered 'secret,' here means essential quality or source of worth, not a hidden fact or mystery. What makes a home pleasant is the character, kindness, and company of those within, not the size of its walls or richness of decoration.

Like a kid goat bleating away with the teat already in its mouth.

The proverb mocks a person who complains, protests, or demands attention without pause, even though the very thing they want is already in their possession. Their noise is out of all proportion to any real need.

Like a goose, all tenderness and no milk.

The image is a mother goose hovering over her goslings with plenty of tenderness, yet as a bird she has no breast to nurse them. Her care is real in feeling but brings them no nourishment, and the proverb rests on that contrast between visible affection and missing substance.

If everyone saw things alike, no merchandise would ever find a buyer.

The saying links the movement of goods to the fact that people do not all regard them the same way. Because one person's assessment differs from another's, wares that some reject are wanted by others. Without that variety of view, merchandise would stay on hand, finding no one to take it.

You who snatch away another woman's husband, what a joke you've made of yourself!

The saying scorns a woman who lures a married man into taking her as a second wife. Rather than gaining honor, she becomes an object of mockery among other women. It assumes a setting where a man may take a second wife, and it blames the woman rather than the man.

What the wind blows in, the whirlwind blows out again.

The saying holds that money arriving by improper or unearned routes will leave just as carelessly. Like something carried in on a breeze, such wealth has no firm anchor, and stronger gusts eventually sweep it off. Its point is the money's origin, not luck in general: the loss is presented as a consequence of how it was gained.

The mice dug the hole, but the bulls are the ones who fell in.

The image is of mice burrowing in the earth and leaving holes, and of heavy bulls (التيران, a colloquial plural) that later stumble into those holes and fall. The small creatures make the opening, but the large ones pay for it, because their weight and size turn a trivial tunnel into a real hazard.

They were only joined once they had been made a perfect match.

The saying holds that people are not brought together by chance. God, the unstated subject, is imagined as first matching their temperaments and only then letting them join, so any close association reveals an underlying likeness.

A person with a hen does not waste even a grain of wheat.

The proverb praises having a small but useful resource that prevents minor losses from accumulating. Its chicken image is figurative: even scraps or grains that fall aside can be recovered and put to use rather than wasted.

Like a flea that makes its dinner out of the guest.

The saying pictures a flea that feeds on whoever arrives, drawing its meal from the visitor's own body. It describes a host whose generosity is only a cover: he takes a stranger in so that he can live off him and strip him of whatever he carries.

The liar's house goes up in flames.

The saying describes a habitual liar whose genuine emergency goes unanswered. Repeated false alarms have worn away the trust of those around him, so when his house truly catches fire and he calls for help, no one comes. It is a general observation about how dishonesty destroys credibility, not a guarantee that every liar meets the same fate.

Trade even with a very small sum, and trust that God can create a livelihood from the margin.

The saying urges a person not to dismiss very modest capital as useless. Its “khamsa” is a small copper monetary unit, so the image is of beginning to trade even when one’s means seem slight.

Like household eunuchs delighting in their masters' children as if they were their own.

The saying mocks a person who swells with pride over something that belongs entirely to someone else. Its image is of historical household eunuch servants, here called aghas, who had no children and celebrated their masters' offspring as if those children reflected glory on them.

A bolted door can fend off danger before it arrives.

The saying urges precaution: sensible protections can avert or reduce harm that might otherwise strike suddenly. Its reference to fate is figurative, presenting preparation as a practical way to resist foreseeable risk rather than a guarantee against misfortune.

When morning breaks, the hidden flaw shows itself.

It describes how a concealed defect or hidden shortcoming becomes visible once the proper time arrives. The image rests on daylight: as the sun rises, what was hidden in dimness is seen plainly and the covered flaw is exposed.

They rowed for him only as hard as his beans were worth.

The picture is of rowing done on someone's behalf and measured against his fava beans: the effort put in rises or falls with what he has handed over. The two halves sound almost alike in Arabic, a playful wordplay that cannot be carried over into English.

The hand weary from work has enough to eat.

Diligent work is presented as a way of meeting basic needs: the person whose hands are tired from labor is the one able to satisfy hunger. It praises effort as materially sustaining, without claiming that hard work invariably brings prosperity.

One bondwoman waiting on another? Now that is a calamity of the highest order.

The saying concerns two enslaved women who stand on the same footing until fortune lifts one of them above the other. As a result, one ends up waiting on her equal, and nothing but luck accounts for the difference in their positions.

Like the Jewish poor, with nothing in this life and nothing in the hereafter.

The saying describes someone who ends up with nothing on either side: no wealth, ease, or success in present life, and no spiritual reward to look forward to after death. It marks a condition of complete and twofold loss.

For want of kindness we fell into coldness, and found ourselves a sweetheart in the enemy's house.

The speaker blames former companions for a falling-out: because they showed so little affection, the relationship cooled into estrangement. Left without warmth from those who should have offered it, the speaker turned for closeness to someone belonging to the enemy's camp, an unlikely and reluctant choice.

They took him to learn at the traditional school only after his hair had turned gray.

This traditional saying mocks instruction, discipline, or training offered after the fitting moment has passed. In its traditional frame, it treats the late cultivation of a practice as difficult after many years of living differently; it is not a general claim about older adults’ ability to learn or change.

If someone has given you up, give them up too and spare yourself the heartache; even if you are dying of thirst, don't go to their water.

If someone has shown they no longer value you, the proverb says to give them up in the same way. Here 'selling' is figurative, meaning dropping someone, not trade. Releasing them is presented as relief, because clinging to an unwilling friend brings only resentment and heartache.

Whoever takes the trouble to come through our door gets the very best we have.

The saying links effort and reward in friendship. The verb زَقّ, to push, pictures a visitor who takes the trouble to come in, not forced entry. Whoever keeps visiting earns لبابنا, our choicest part or kernel, a word distinct from بابنا, 'our door.' Generosity is owed first to those who show up.

Whoever holds the pen won't write a wretched fate for himself.

Anyone with the power to shape their own situation will naturally steer it toward good fortune rather than hardship. The pen stands for that power: the person doing the writing decides what the record says, and nobody in that position would deliberately set down a wretched lot for themselves.

Do not celebrate someone’s departure until you see who comes to replace them.

Do not treat a departure as good news before you know what will take its place. The replacement may prove no better, or even worse.

Woman, all you got out of it was a longer hem trailing in the dirt behind you.

The image is of a woman whose only gain is extra length on the back of her garment, a train that sweeps the ground and adds weight without improving how she lives. The supposed addition is useless and, worse, a nuisance.

The professional mourner showed up a year and a half too late to lament.

The saying criticizes an action taken so late that it cannot serve its intended purpose. It applies to belated help, sympathy, attention, or remedies offered after the moment when they could have made a difference.

Never wish the axe on the tree that gives you shade.

The saying warns against turning on whatever protects or provides for you. Its verb means calling down harm, as in a curse or ill wish, and the image is of felling the tree outright, not pruning it. Someone who benefits from another's care, generosity, or position should not wish that support destroyed, since losing it would leave them exposed.