English proverbs (A)

English proverbs (A)

Proverbs are popularly defined as short expressions of popular wisdom. Efforts to improve on the popular definition have not led to a more precise definition. The wisdom is in the form of a general observation about the world or a bit of advice, sometimes more nearly an attitude toward a situation.

A

• Ability can take you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.
• Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
  • From Isle of Beauty by Thomas Haynes Bayly
  • Interpretation: We miss people when we are separated from them.
• Absence makes the heart grow fonder but makes the mind forget.
• The acorn (apple) never falls far from the tree.
  • Meaning: People are similar to their parents/their roots.
• Act today only, tomorrow is too late
• Action is the proper fruit of knowledge.
  • Meaning: Only by doing can you really know.
• Actions speak louder than words.
  • meaning: What you do is more important than what you say
• Advice most needed is least heeded.
• After dinner sit a while, after supper walk a mile.
• All cats love fish but hate to get their paws wet.
  • sometimes you have to do bad things to get good ones
• All flowers are not in one garden.
• All for one and one for all.
  • Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers
• All frills and no knickers.
  • Possible interpretation: All style and no substance.
• All fur coat and no knickers.
  • Meaning: A person concerned with displays of ostentation, that fool no one regarding their actual situation or character.
• All good things must come to an end.
• All hat and no cattle.
• All's fair in love and war.
  • Interpretation: Love and War are arenas of complete passion that often obfuscate reason.
• All's well that ends well.
  • A play by William Shakespeare
  • Variant: All is well that ends well. - Divers Proverbs, Nathan Bailey, 1721 [1]
• All roads lead to Rome.
  • Possible interpretation: However you try to go about things all will lead to the same conclusions
  • Possible interpretation: Power draws all things to itself.
  • Interpretation: The heartland/metropolis (for better or worse) yields considerable power.
  • Meaning: The first roads were built by the Romans and at the time of the Roman empire, all roads led to Rome.
• All sizzle and no steak.
  • Possible interpretation: All style and no substance
• All that glisters is not gold.
  • William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, act II, scene 7.
  • Often corrupted to: All that glitters is not gold.
  • Possible interpretation: Not everything is what it appears to be.
• All the world is your country, to do good is your religion.
  • Possible interpretation: All talk and appearance and little or no substance.
• All things come to those who wait.
• All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All play and no work makes Jack a mere toy.
• Always care about your flowers and your friends. Otherwise they'll fade, and soon your house will be empty.

• An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
  • Originated in the 1900s as a marketing slogan dreamt up by American growers concerned that the temperance movement would cut into sales of apple cider. (Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire, Random House, 2001, ISBN 0375501290, p. 22, cf. p. 9 & 50)
• April showers bring May flowers.
  • Meaning: Something seeming bad or boring now brings good things in the future.
• As fit as a fiddle.
  • Meaning: very fit and well
• As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another
• As soon as a man is born, he begins to die.
• As you make your bed, so you must lie in it.
  • Similar to You reap what you sow
• Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies.
  • Interpretation: There are some things I'd rather not say, so don't ask me!
  • Cf. Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer (1773): "Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no fibs"
• Aught for naught, and a penny change.
  • Interpretation: you can't get something for nothing -- you might as well expect to get paid to take it.