Ten Proverbs from Eight Languages, and What They Mean
A proverb is an argument that has been compressed until it fits in one line and then repeated until nobody remembers who made it. That is what makes them worth reading in groups: put ten side by side and the disagreements show.
These come from the LLOS proverb archive, which holds a little over thirty-seven thousand entries across many languages. The ten below were drawn at random and left in the order they arrived.
Why this is worth knowing
Proverbs are the closest thing a culture has to a written record of its practical advice, and they are unusually honest because nobody was trying to impress anyone when they were made. Reading them across languages shows which lessons had to be learned everywhere and which are local.
The entries
Scintilla una magno igni.
Latin
A single spark can start a great fire.
The Latin is the ancestor of a warning that turns up in almost every language on this list: small causes, large consequences.
Dom je tamo gdje je srce.
Croatian
Home is where the heart is.
This one travels almost unchanged into English, which is rare enough to be worth noticing.
Quand la chèvre est attachée, elle broute où elle est attachée.
French
When the goat is tied, it grazes where it is tied.
A sharper observation than it first appears, and usually said about people whose choices are more constrained than they look.
સૂબહ રાશો નિશા છોટો.
Gujarati
A morning hero, evening zero.
The Gujarati compresses a whole character study into four words, and the English rendering loses the rhythm that makes it stick.
명예는 재산보다 소중하다.
Korean
Honor is more valuable than riches.
Korean states the preference plainly rather than arguing for it, which is the usual form for proverbs about honour.
Chacun voit midi à sa porte.
French
Everyone sees noon at their own door.
The most quietly devastating line here: it is about the limits of everyone's perspective, including the speaker's.
머리 아프면 온몸이 아프다.
Korean
When the head aches, all the members ache.
A medical metaphor put to social use, most often about a household or an organisation rather than a body.
Mma anaghi echeta ihe o na-egbusi, mana osisi na-echeta ihe mere ya.
Igbo
The knife does not remember what it cuts, but the tree remembers what happened to it.
The Igbo proverb is the one to sit with. It is about memory, and about who gets to decide that something is finished.
من زرع الريح حصد العاصفة
Arabic
Whoever sows the wind reaps the whirlwind.
This has entered English through the King James Bible, which is why it sounds more familiar than the others.
Man muss aus wenig viel machen.
German
One must make much out of little.
German pragmatism stated without ornament, and closer to an instruction than to an observation.
Questions readers ask
What does Chacun voit midi à sa porte mean?
Literally, everyone sees noon at their own door. It means that each person judges by their own situation and assumes it is the general case. English has no exact equivalent, which is part of why it is worth borrowing.
Do proverbs from different countries say the same things?
Often, but not always. Warnings about small causes and large consequences appear nearly everywhere. Proverbs about honour, obligation and memory vary much more, because they depend on how a society is arranged.
What is the Igbo proverb about the knife and the tree?
The knife does not remember what it cuts, but the tree remembers what happened to it. It is about the asymmetry between causing harm and receiving it, and it is usually quoted to someone who has told an injured party to move on.
Where do proverbs come from?
Most have no traceable author. They survive by being useful and easy to repeat, which is a strong filter: a proverb that was inconvenient to say or hard to remember did not last long enough to be written down.
How many proverbs does the LLOS archive hold?
A little over thirty-seven thousand, across a wide range of languages, each stored with its translation and, where available, the context in which it is used.
Where to go next on LLOS
Read together, the ten agree on more than they disagree about. The interesting exceptions are the two concerned with memory and with point of view, which is roughly where most arguments between people start.