Arabic proverbs

Eat your duqqa out in the lanes, and let the chicken that brings trouble in its wake be gone.

A humble meal taken without worry is worth more than a rich dish that leaves hardship behind it. The speaker prefers duqqa, a simple relish of salt and dried mint or similar herbs for dipping, even eaten out in the alleys, and curses away the hen whose enjoyment is followed by trouble.

I have suffered enough—let my untroubled enemy enjoy my misfortune.

The saying voices a sense of having endured all one can bear. It resigns itself bitterly to an opponent's satisfaction, as though further hardship would add nothing to pain already suffered.

Like a winter's day: over quickly, yet dreary all the same.

The saying compares a trying situation to a winter day. Such a day passes quickly, yet its cold, overcast skies and rain still weigh on the spirit. The image suggests that how long something lasts does not decide how much distress it can cause.

Better to take the cow out to pasture than to haul water up with the well pulley.

The saying sets two familiar rural chores side by side: walking a cow out to graze, which is fairly easy, and hauling water from a well by rope and pulley wheel, which is exhausting. Here بكرة means that pulley, not "tomorrow," and ولا means "rather than," declaring the first chore plainly preferable.

“How could you tell the story was false?” “Because it was too enormous.”

A report may become suspect when its claims are stretched so far that they no longer seem credible. The saying presents extravagance itself as a reason to doubt whether what is being told is true.

Once its breast is empty, it starts to sing.

The saying draws on the hand mill; its "chest" is the stone's hollow, not the lote tree. While grain is ground, the stone works quietly under its load, but once the flour is gone the turning stone gives off a ringing hum, its figurative "singing."

When they told the man on the stake to mind his modesty, he answered: 'Let those who have a life to return to fret about such things.'

A man dying by impalement, a cruel and graphic image, is urged to show modesty, a call to decorum rather than a charge of wrongdoing. He answers that worrying about how one looks in the world belongs to those who will go on living in it. Shame and reputation matter only to someone with a future among other people.

Don't marry the man you love, and don't go back to the man who divorced you.

This is counsel addressed to a woman, about the men in her life and two risky choices in marriage. First, she should not take as husband the man she is infatuated with, because romantic passion tends, more often than not, to curdle into dislike once the couple actually marry.

There is room on the mat for everyone.

The phrase signals that this is a gathering where ceremony counts for nothing. Whoever is present may behave naturally and comfortably, with no one expected to perform elaborate courtesies or keep a formal distance from the others.

Someone who will not accept peaches may end up settling for peach juice.

The proverb warns that rejecting something desirable through needless dissatisfaction can result in having to accept a less appealing version of it. It frames the loss as the consequence of being unwilling to be content with what was first available.

Property left unguarded teaches people to steal.

The saying holds that wealth left carelessly exposed invites wrongdoing. Its key word means provision or livelihood broadly, here belongings, and 'loose' means neglected by an owner, not ownerless. When goods lie unprotected, even people with no habit of stealing may feel the pull to help themselves, because the chance is easy and nobody stands in the way.

Even when life seems quiet, do not let down your guard.

The saying warns that a calm stretch should not be mistaken for lasting safety. Its image of sleep is figurative: when circumstances appear settled, a person should remain watchful and prepared for change rather than becoming careless.

A tiny date stone can keep a jar steady, and someone answers that it can hold up even the great water vat.

The proverb argues that size is a poor measure of importance. A date stone is almost nothing, yet wedged beneath a jar's base it keeps the vessel from tilting. A second voice, introduced by 'he said', answers and pushes further: it can steady even the zir, a far larger earthenware water vat.

Put something by, and sooner or later life will come asking for it.

Whatever a person puts aside and keeps back does not remain theirs for good. Sooner or later the course of events, pictured here as Time with a voice of its own, arrives and lays claim to that very thing, so the reserve is eventually taken from its keeper.

Adding to a charitable endowment is a deed that brings reward.

The saying holds that anyone who has already set up a charitable endowment and later enlarges it is performing a further righteous act. The word usually meaning 'permitted' here signals a meritorious deed earning divine reward, so reading it as merely 'lawful' understates the point.

He left and we cheered, only for someone even more insufferable to show up.

The saying captures a familiar disappointment: someone unpleasant finally goes away, everyone breathes a sigh of relief, and then a newcomer arrives who is even harder to bear. Here "heavy" means tiresome or unwelcome company, not physical weight, and the brief joy only sharpens the irony.

A loose tongue earns you a smack on the back of the neck.

The saying treats speech as the cause of a slap: a careless word may stir an opponent or superior to strike the speaker on the back of the neck. The nape is figurative, the body part that receives the blow, not a separate subject of the warning.

Even mountains of kohl wear away with use, and time can consume even great wealth.

Even a vast store can disappear through repeated small uses and the mere passage of time. The saying counsels against mistaking present abundance for permanence or security.

Like a Bedouin, he never lets a score go unsettled.

The saying describes a person who holds on to every grievance until it is answered. Such a person will not let an insult or injury pass without retaliating, however much time goes by. The point is a settled habit of getting even, not a single act of revenge.

A habit clings to a person right to the very end.

Behavior repeated over a long time becomes so much a part of someone that giving it up is extremely hard. The saying makes this point by suggesting that an ingrained practice can persist even past the end of life itself.

Farm a smaller plot, but tend it well.

The saying advises keeping one's holdings within reach of one's labor. In this dialectal wording, the opening verb means take less, not say, and the second verb means working the land, not serving a person. A farmer who takes only the ground he can properly tend gains more than one who claims wide fields and neglects them.

Orphaned and branded by fate, they are wanted by no one.

The saying presents the hardship of orphans as a sealed destiny, with fate or a divine power as the unnamed agent. They lose their parents, and their unhappy lot is treated as already decreed. Being struck on the hands is figurative, not literal punishment: it stands for a judgment stamped on them in advance.

He's just like a dog: he'd happily go hungry as long as he can lie about.

The saying mocks a person whose lack of drive is so deep that they will accept going hungry rather than stir themselves to earn or fetch a meal. The point is not a love of hunger itself: hunger is the price the lazy person willingly pays to avoid effort.

At home, even a dog becomes a lion.

A creature that seems lowly elsewhere grows fierce and confident once it stands on its own turf. Home, and the people who belong there, give it a sense of worth and strength it lacks abroad, so it guards and prizes that place with surprising courage.

Whoever takes a hard look at his own situation ends up with a troubled mind.

At its core, the saying links self-knowledge with unease. Once a person stops and measures where he actually stands, the weight of what he finds, whether needs, faults, or uncertainties, crowds his thoughts and leaves little room for calm.

When you mean to do something kind, do not wait for others' advice.

The saying urges prompt action when a person has decided on a genuinely beneficial or charitable deed. It treats delay for consultation as unnecessary when the moral value of the act is already clear.

To fill his stomach, he let them shave off his beard.

The saying describes a man who gives up his self-respect to get something to eat. Out of need, he lets others expose him to mockery. The beard, a traditional marker of a man's dignity, is shaved by others with his consent: a visible public shame accepted as the price of a full stomach.

Anyone who eats at the mourning meal is expected to take part in the mourning.

The saying links eating food at a mourning gathering with an expected display of grief. Someone who accepts a portion of the meal is portrayed as owing a corresponding act of participation in the mourning.

A silk scarf thrown over a water-jar lid.

The saying pictures a splendid silk 'asba, a striped, brightly colored, fringed head covering, laid over the lid of a zir, a humble earthenware water jar. The fine cloth dresses up an ordinary household object, yet the jar itself is unchanged, so the beauty belongs entirely to the wrapping.

Better to feed a caravan that passes through than a donkey kept tethered at home.

Here wala means 'rather than', not 'and no': a large but one-off expense is easier to bear than a small one that never stops. Feeding a whole band of travelers who stop by and then leave costs less, in the end, than keeping one animal tethered at home that must be fed every day.

They grumbled that melons have worn out plenty of camels; he shot back that camels have crushed plenty of melons too.

The saying pictures a two-way exchange of damage. Heavy loads of watermelon wear down and exhaust the camels that carry them, yet the camels in turn crack and smash a good share of the fruit. Neither side escapes unharmed, so a one-sided complaint misses half the story.

The one doesn't rule out the other.

The saying describes something that sits alongside another thing without doing it any harm. The two may look mismatched or even opposed at first glance, yet the presence of one leaves the other intact. It insists that apparent contradiction need not mean real conflict.

Kind words keep a person out of harm's way.

The saying ties personal safety to the way one speaks. Someone whose words are gentle, courteous and pleasant to hear is spared much of the trouble that harsh or careless talk invites, so softness of speech becomes self-protection. The sweetness meant is genuine courtesy, not flattery, insincerity or deceptive charm.

To be poor in your own country is to live there as a stranger.

The saying holds that lacking money can make a person feel foreign in the very place where they were born. The estrangement is figurative, not literal exile: familiar streets and kin offer little comfort when poverty leaves someone overlooked, unwelcome, or unable to take part in ordinary social life.

"Woman, why is your nose running?" "It's the winter cold." "Really? I saw you back in the summer, too."

The saying exposes an excuse that blames a lasting fault on a temporary circumstance. The woman says the cold weather is making her nose run. The man answers that he saw her in summer as well, implying her nose ran then too, so the condition has nothing to do with the season.

His backside is bare, yet he wears a knife in his belt.

The image is of a man too poor to own clothes that cover his body, his rump left bare, who still thrusts a knife into his belt so he will look formidable and brave. The saying ridicules anyone who puts on airs far above his true standing or means.

Hand things out and people adore you; come to collect and they turn against you.

The saying exposes self-serving affection. While someone is handing out help, lending money or granting requests, the recipients treat that person as a dear friend. The moment the same person asks for a debt to be settled or for what rightfully belongs to them, the warmth disappears and resentment takes its place.

A welcoming expression is a second gift.

The saying treats a warm, pleasant manner as a gift in its own right. Beyond material generosity, meeting people with visible friendliness can make them feel received and valued.

Whoever owns even a single share of the horse has the right to ride it.

A qirat is a fractional share of property, traditionally one twenty-fourth, not a gem-weight carat. Holding any stake in shared property, however small, gives a genuine right to use it; co-owners cannot shut out a minor partner because the share is tiny, since the right comes from ownership, not size.

Goods you would leave in another's keeping are better sold.

The saying advises against leaving tangible possessions, such as merchandise or livestock rather than cash, with another person for safekeeping. A custodian rarely tends someone else's goods or animals as carefully as the owner would. Items left in that kind of indifferent care can spoil, sicken, or vanish, so their value quietly drains away while the owner is absent.

We started out talking about treating animals, and now we're on to doctoring people.

The saying describes a conversation that set out on one subject, the treatment of animals, and has arrived somewhere else entirely, at the practice of medicine. Here الحكمة means medicine, set against البيطرة, not its more familiar sense of 'wisdom'.

If it doesn't matter to you, leave it in your stepfather's keeping.

The proverb warns that a person with no personal attachment to you or your belongings is a poor guardian for anything you value. Its image draws on an old stereotype of a mother's husband as neglectful or self-serving toward her children from another marriage; the saying reflects that traditional view and does not show how real stepparents behave.

If only all that labor had brought forth something.

The saying pictures a woman who has endured the full pain of childbirth only to find the delivery fruitless, because the child is stillborn or malformed. 'Full' renders a colloquial form of the word for 'filled': the wish is that the labor had been productive, that the suffering had yielded something worth it.

He never misses his required prayers, yet he keeps burrowing after what isn't his.

The saying describes a person who mixes good deeds with bad ones. He is careful never to miss his required prayers, yet he also works steadily and secretly to get hold of other people's possessions. The digging is a figure for this persistent, hidden burrowing after buried valuables, not literal excavation.

People always lose sight of the consequences.

The saying observes that people often leave eventual consequences out of their thinking. They consider an action without keeping its final result in view, overlooking what may follow from it.

Save your trills of joy until the new clothes are actually on your back.

The saying warns against announcing happiness over something that has not yet arrived. Ululation, the high trilling cry traditionally made by women to announce joy, should wait until the desired thing, pictured here as new clothing, is actually in hand and being worn, not merely anticipated or promised.

Better the gallows than to be saved by a bastard pleading on my behalf.

The saying declares that even death by hanging is preferable to being rescued through the good offices of a low, ignoble person. Accepting such a person's intercession is treated as a deeper humiliation than the punishment itself, because it places one in their debt.

A bite from my neighbor's table never satisfies me, yet the disgrace of taking it trails after me.

Taking food or support from others, even a mere mouthful, brings little real benefit, yet the humiliation of having accepted it clings to the person long afterward. The gain is slight and brief; the damage to one's dignity endures.

What you put in the manger, you get back in the milk pail.

The saying ties output directly to input: an animal's milk rises or falls with the kind and amount of fodder it receives. Whatever feed you place in the trough reappears later as milk in a separate earthenware milking bowl, so a stingy hand at feeding time means a thin yield.

If I'm a lord and you're a lord, who's going to herd the donkeys?

The saying mocks a situation in which everyone claims high status and no one accepts a lowly role. Its 'amir' signals rank and self-importance rather than literal royalty. When each party acts like a master, the plain, necessary jobs, pictured as driving the donkeys, are left undone, and the shared business stalls.