English proverbs

The proverb likens a person’s lost credit to shattered glass: once others cease to trust someone, their good standing cannot simply be put back together. Credit here includes financial reliability but is not limited to it.

A financial obligation tends to remain more vivid to the person expecting repayment than to the person responsible for paying. The proverb contrasts their different stakes in the same debt.

Progress may begin with small, uncertain efforts before someone is ready to act with confidence or take on a harder task.

The proverb pictures criticism as attention paid to someone else’s efforts. Like a person brushing another’s coat, the critic works on what belongs to another person.

The tree and its shadow illustrate how an underlying defect can become visible in its effects. What is produced may reflect the condition of what produced it.

A log does not have to be straight to make a good fire. An irregular shape need not prevent something from serving its purpose.

The saying presents hardship as the path to a hoped-for reward: a person must bear a burden before enjoying the honor or benefit that follows.

The proverb turns a cross, an image of suffering, into a means of ascent. It suggests that hardship can have spiritual value on the way to heaven.

Affection can shape judgment: a parent may find their own child beautiful regardless of how others see that child. The crow’s preference illustrates how personal attachment influences praise.

Repeated attention to outward appearance does not necessarily change a person's underlying character or conduct. Washing cannot make the crow's feathers white.

The proverb presents cruelty as a form of domination inseparable from fear. Its image of a tyrant makes fear part of how cruel power operates, not a chance consequence of it.

The proverb condemns taking pleasure in another person's suffering. It treats enjoyment of harm as a moral failing beyond the harm itself.

Just as chickens gather where they can find crumbs, people tend to show up where something is available to them. Even a modest benefit can draw attention and bring a group together.

The proverb advises against expressing distress over a setback that has not happened. A feared injury is not yet an actual one.

A great deal of noise or excitement may produce very little of value. The proverb contrasts the scale of the commotion with the smallness of the result.

The cuckoo’s arrival at a bare thorn serves as the cue for one course of action: sell a cow and buy corn. The advice depends on what the bird encounters when it comes.

When an unwelcome situation cannot be changed, a person has to find a way to live with it rather than continue looking for a remedy.

• Compare: Someone faces a hardship they cannot remove by their own efforts, and the question is how to bear it.

The proverb suggests that hostility directed at someone else may eventually bring trouble to the person who expressed it.

Repeated ways of acting can become so familiar that they feel automatic rather than chosen. The proverb likens an acquired habit to something innate.

A single act may establish a pattern: what begins as an exception or experiment can come to be treated as the usual way of doing things.

Doing something regularly can make it feel less difficult. Familiarity helps a person approach a task that once seemed daunting.

The proverb urges people to stop an established practice once they recognize that it does harm. Familiarity alone is no reason to keep doing something.

The saying joins taking a portion with returning for another. It suggests that a first cut need not exhaust what is available.

Cruel or thoughtless treatment can cause intense emotional pain, even when it leaves no visible injury.

The speaker looks back on a time when they were too inexperienced to exercise sound judgment. The image of teeth coming in treats wisdom as something acquired with maturity.

The proverb pictures a grave wound needing treatment that might be excessive for a minor injury. The remedy should match the seriousness of the harm.

When the music ends, the dancing ends with it. The proverb presents an activity as dependent on the thing that enables or prompts it.

A person can perform well when circumstances favor them. The image of dancing to fortune’s music presents success as easier when opportunity arrives at the right moment.

Someone who keeps dancing despite the thorns must love it deeply. The discomfort makes their enthusiasm plain.

Fear can make a person turn to God for help, only for that attention to fade once the threat has passed. The proverb points to a contrast between urgent need and what follows relief.

Someone with exacting tastes may find that necessity leaves no room to be choosy. Even an unappealing option can become the only practical one.

Taken literally, the proverb treats darkness and the absence of light as the same practical problem: either way, a person cannot see what is ahead.

The saying depicts a woman who prizes a man described as dark. Calling him a jewel places the emphasis on how precious he seems to her.

A person who searches without knowing what lies ahead may come upon something they would rather not have found.

The saying advises a suitor to seek the mother's goodwill before pursuing her daughter. It treats the mother's opinion as influential in the courtship.

The image suggests that a narrow gap is enough for daylight to become visible. What appears closed off may still have an opening through which something can be seen.

The comparison stresses that a person or animal is dead. It makes a plain statement of death more emphatic by likening the subject to an inanimate object.

The proverb warns against relying on a benefit that becomes available only after someone else dies. The expected gain may arrive too late to meet a present need.

A person who refuses to consider what is being said may be harder to reach than someone who cannot hear it. The obstacle is unwillingness, not lack of opportunity.

The proverb condemns treating a shortage as an opportunity for personal gain. It judges profit built on other people's deprivation to be morally wrong.

Death cannot be relied on to arrive at a predictable time. No date or plan can guarantee that a person will live until then.

Death cannot be persuaded to pass someone by. The image of deafness makes refusal and pleading equally powerless against it.

Death is the one outcome no one can escape. However uncertain the course of a life may be, its end is inevitable.

Help that arrives after the harm is done cannot prevent it. The doctor’s arrival stands for a remedy offered only when its opportunity has passed.

The proverb presents owing money as a particularly harsh form of hardship. Even when someone has money coming in, repayments can leave little freedom to decide how to use it.

Owing nothing removes a source of financial pressure. The proverb presents freedom from debt as a way to avoid the risks that come with having to repay what one has borrowed.

The image suggests that the most rewarding prospects are not always found in the easiest or most obvious place. A better result may call for looking beyond what is readily accessible.

The proverb contrasts actions with speech through a plant image: fruit is the substantial result, while leaves are less decisive. Conduct shows what a person has actually accomplished.

The proverb treats a person's actions, especially actions of moral worth, as a better measure of their life than its duration.

Waiting to act can make a problem harder to solve or allow an opportunity to disappear. Time itself may increase the cost of inaction.