Proverbs

From The Phrase Finder

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link
A change is as good as a rest
A fool and his money are soon parted
A friend in need is a friend indeed
A good beginning makes a good ending
A good man is hard to find
A house divided against itself cannot stand
A house is not a home
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step
A leopard cannot change its spots
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing
A little of what you fancy does you good
A miss is as good as a mile
A new broom sweeps clean
A nod's as good as a wink to a blind horse
A penny saved is a penny earned
A person is known by the company he keeps
A picture paints a thousand words
A place for everything and everything in its place
A problem shared is a problem halved
A prophet is not recognized in his own land
A rolling stone gathers no moss
A stitch in time saves nine
A thing of beauty is a joy forever
A volunteer is worth twenty pressed men
A watched pot never boils
A woman's place is in the home
A woman's work is never done
Absolute power corrupts absolutely
Actions speak louder than words
All good things come to he who waits
All that glisters is not gold
All the world loves a lover
All things must pass
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All you need is love
All's fair in love and war
An Englishman's home is his castle
An apple a day keeps the doctor away
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure
As you sow so shall you reap
Ask no questions and hear no lies
Attack is the best form of defence
Barking dogs seldom bite
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
Beauty is only skin deep
Beggars can't be choosers
Behind every great man there's a great woman
Better late than never
Better safe than sorry
Better the Devil you know than the Devil you don't
Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool that to speak and remove all doubt
Beware of Greeks bearing gifts
Birds of a feather flock together
Blood is thicker than water
Boys will be boys
Charity begins at home
Cleanliness is next to godliness
Cold hands, warm heart
Comparisons are odious
Count you blessings
Cut your coat to suit your cloth
Discretion is the better part of valour
Do as you would be done by
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
Don't bite the hand that feeds you
Don't burn your bridges behind you
Don't change horses in midstream
Don't count your chickens before they are hatched
Don't cross the bridge till you come to it
Don't keep a dog and bark yourself
Don't let the bastards grind you down
Don't look a gift horse in the mouth
Don't put all your eggs in one basket
Don't put new wine into old bottles
Don't rock the boat
Don't spoil the ship for a ha'pworth of tar
Don't try to teach your Grandma to suck eggs
Don't try to walk before you can crawl
Don't upset the apple-cart
Doubt is the beginning not the end of wisdom
Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy wealthy and wise
Easy come, easy go
Empty vessels make the most noise
Enough is as good as a feast
Enough is enough
Every dark cloud has a silver lining
Every dog has his day
Every man has his price
Every stick has two ends
Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die
Failing to plan is planning to fail
Faint heart never won fair lady
Faith will move mountains
Familiarity breeds contempt
Finders keepers, losers weepers
First things first
Fish and guests smell after three days
Flattery will get you nowhere
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread
Forewarned is forearmed
Fortune favours the brave
God helps those who help themselves
Good fences make good neighbours
Good talk saves the food
Good things come to those who wait
Great minds think alike
Half a loaf is better than no bread
Handsome is as handsome does
Hard work never did anyone any harm
Haste makes waste
He who hesitates is lost
He who laughs last laughs longest
He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword
He who pays the piper calls the tune
Hindsight is always twenty-twenty
History repeats itself
Home is where the heart is
If God had meant us to fly he'd have given us wings
If a job is worth doing it is worth doing well
If at first you don't succeed try, try and try again
If ifs and ands were pots and pans there'd be no work for tinkers
If life deals you lemons, make lemonade
If the mountain won't come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain
If wishes were horses beggars would ride
If you can't be good, be careful.
If you can't beat em, join em
If you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery
In the kingdom of the blind the one eyed man is king
In the midst of life we are in death
Into every life a little rain must fall
It goes without saying
It never rains but it pours
It takes a thief to catch a thief
It takes one to know one
It's all grist to the mill
It's an ill wind that blows no one any good
It's better to give than to receive
It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all
It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness
It's better to travel hopefully than to arrive
It's never too late
It's no use locking the stable door after the horse has bolted
It's not worth crying over spilt milk
It's the early bird that gets the worm
It's the empty can that makes the most noise
It's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease
Jack of all trades, master of none
Keep your chin up
Keep your powder dry
Laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and, you weep alone
Laughter is the best medicine
Let bygones be bygones
Let not the sun go down on your wrath
Let sleeping dogs lie
Let the punishment fit the crime
Life begins at forty
Life is what you make it
Life's not all beer and skittles
Lightening never strikes twice in the same place
Like father, like son
Little pitchers have big ears
Live for today for tomorrow never comes
Look before you leap
Love is blind
Make love not war
Man does not live by bread alone
Many a little makes a mickle
Marry in haste, repent at leisure
Mighty oaks from little acorns grow
Misery loves company
Money doesn't grow on trees
Money makes the world go round
Money talks
More haste, less speed
Music has charms to soothe the savage breast
Nature abhors a vacuum
Necessity is the mother of invention
Never judge a book by its cover
Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today
No man is an island
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent
No rest for the wicked
Nothing is certain but death and taxes
Oil and water don't mix
Old soldiers never die, they just fade away
One good turn deserves another
Only fools and horses work
Opportunity only knocks once
Out of sight, out of mind
Pearls of wisdom
People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones
Possession is nine tenths of the law
Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely
Practice makes perfect
Pride comes before a fall
Procrastination is the thief of time
Put your best foot forward
Red sky at night shepherds delight; red sky in the morning, shepherds warning
Revenge is a dish best served cold
Rome wasn't built in a day
Spare the rod and spoil the child
Speak softly and carry a big stick
Still waters run deep
Stupid is as stupid does
Talk is cheap
That which does not kill us makes us stronger
The Devil finds work for idle hands to do
The best defence is a good offence
The boy is father to the man
The cobbler always wears the worst shoes
The darkest hour is just before the dawn
The early bird catches the worm
The ends justify the means
The exception which proves the rule
The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world
The longest journey starts with a single step
The more things change, the more they stay the same
The pen is mightier than sword
The proof of the pudding is in the eating
The way to a man's heart is through his stomach
There are none so blind as those, that will not see
There but for the grace of God, go I
There's always more fish in the sea
There's many a slip twixt cup and lip
There's more than one way to skin a cat
There's no fool like an old fool
There's no place like home
There's no smoke without fire
There's no such thing as a free lunch
There's no such thing as bad publicity
There's no time like the present
There's none so deaf as they that will not hear
There's one born every minute
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it
Those who sleep with dogs will rise with fleas
Time and tide wait for no man
Time is a great healer
To err is human, to forgive divine
To the victor go the spoils
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive
Tomorrow never comes
Too many cooks spoil the broth
Truth is stranger than fiction
Two heads are better then one
Two wrongs don't make a right
Walk softly but carry a big stick
Waste not want not
When the cat's away the mice will play
Where there's a will there's a way
Worrying never did anyone any good
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink
You can't get blood out of a stone
You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear
You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs
You can't make bricks without straw
You can't teach an old dog new tricks
You can't tell a book by looking at its cover
You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar
Youth is wasted on the young

The Pronunciation Guide For Special Characters

-- SINGLE CHARACTERS --

SPACE, blank, ghost&

! EXCLAMATION POINT, exclamation (mark), (ex)clam, excl, wow, hey, boing,
bang#, shout, yell, shriek, pling, factorial, ball-bat, smash, cuss,
store#, potion&, not*+, dammit*#

" QUOTATION MARK, (double) quote, dirk, literal mark, rabbit ears,
double ping, double glitch, amulet&, web&, inverted commas

# CROSSHATCH, pound, pound sign, number, number sign, sharp, octothorpe#,
hash, (garden) fence, crunch, mesh, hex, flash, grid, pig-pen,
tictactoe, scratch (mark), (garden) gate, hak, oof, rake, sink&,
corridor&, unequal#, punch mark

$ DOLLAR SIGN, dollar, cash, currency symbol, buck, string#, escape#,
ding, big-money, gold&, Sonne#

% PERCENT SIGN, percent, mod+, shift-5, double-oh-seven, grapes, food&

& AMPERSAND, and, amper, address+, shift-7, andpersand, snowman,
bitand+, donald duck#, daemon&, background*, pretzel

' APOSTROPHE, (single) quote, tick, prime, irk, pop, spark, glitch,
lurker above&

* ASTERISK, star, splat, spider, aster, times, wildcard*, gear, dingle,
(Nathan) Hale#, bug, gem&, twinkle, funny button#, pine cone, glob*

() PARENTHESES, parens, round brackets, bananas, ears, bowlegs
( LEFT PARENTHESIS, (open) paren, so, wane, parenthesee, open, sad,
tool&
) RIGHT PARENTHESIS, already, wax, unparenthesee, close (paren), happy,
thesis, weapon&

+ PLUS SIGN, plus, add, cross, and, intersection, door&, spellbook&

, COMMA, tail, trapper&

- HYPHEN, minus (sign), dash, dak, option, flag, negative (sign), worm,
bithorpe#

. PERIOD, dot, decimal (point), (radix) point, spot, full stop,
put#, floor&

/ SLASH, stroke, virgule, solidus, slant, diagonal, over, slat, slak,
across#, compress#, reduce#, replicate#, spare, divided-by, wand&,
forward slash, shilling#

: COLON, two-spot, double dot, dots, chameleon&

; SEMICOLON, semi, hybrid, giant eel&, go-on#

<> ANGLE BRACKETS, angles, funnels, brokets, pointy brackets, widgets
< LESS THAN, less, read from*, from*, in*, comesfrom*, crunch,
sucks, left chevron#, open pointy (brack[et]), bra#, upstairs&, west,
(left|open) widget
> GREATER THAN, more, write to*, into/toward*, out*, gazinta*, zap,
blows, right chevron#, closing pointy (brack[et]), ket#, downstairs&,
east, (right|close) widget

= EQUAL SIGN, equal(s), gets, becomes, quadrathorpe#, half-mesh, ring&

? QUESTION MARK, question, query, whatmark, what, wildchar*, huh, ques,
kwes, quiz, quark, hook, scroll&, interrogation point

@ AT SIGN, at, each, vortex, whirl, whirlpool, cyclone, snail, ape (tail),
cat, snable-a#, trunk-a#, rose, cabbage, Mercantile symbol, strudel#,
fetch#, shopkeeper&, human&, commercial-at, monkey (tail)

[] BRACKETS, square brackets, U-turns, edged parentheses
[ LEFT BRACKET, bracket, bra, (left) square (brack[et]), opensquare,
armor&
] RIGHT BRACKET, unbracket, ket, right square (brack[et]), unsquare, close,
mimic&

\ BACKSLASH, reversed virgule, bash, (back)slant, backwhack, backslat,
escape*, backslak, bak, scan#, expand#, opulent throne&, slosh, slope,
blash

^ CIRCUMFLEX, caret, carrot, (top)hat, cap, uphat, party hat, housetop,
up arrow, control, boink, chevron, hiccup, power, to-the(-power), fang,
sharkfin, and#, xor+, wok, trap&, pointer#, pipe*, upper-than#

_ UNDERSCORE, underline, underbar, under, score, backarrow, flatworm, blank,
chain&, gets#, dash#, sneak

` GRAVE, (grave/acute) accent, backquote, left/open quote, backprime,
unapostrophe, backspark, birk, blugle, backtick, push, backglitch,
backping, execute#, boulder&, rock&, blip

{} BRACES, curly braces, squiggly braces, curly brackets, squiggle brackets,
Tuborgs#, ponds, curly chevrons#, squirrly braces, hitchcocks#,
chippendale brackets#
{ LEFT BRACE, brace, curly, leftit, embrace, openbrace, begin+,
fountain&
} RIGHT BRACE, unbrace, uncurly, rytit, bracelet, close, end+, a pool&

| VERTICAL BAR, pipe*, pipe to*, vertical line, broken line#, bar, or+,
bitor+, vert, v-bar, spike, to*, gazinta*, thru*, pipesinta*, tube,
mark, whack, gutter, wall&

~ TILDE, twiddle, tilda, tildee, wave, squiggle, swung dash, approx,
wiggle, enyay#, home*, worm, not+


-- MULTIPLE CHARACTER STRINGS --

!? interrobang (one overlapped character)
*/ asterslash+, times-div#
/* slashterix+, slashaster
:= becomes#
<- gets
<< left-shift+, double smaller
<> unequal#
>> appends*, cat-astrophe, right-shift+, double greater
-> arrow+, pointer to+, hiccup+
#! sh'bang, wallop
\!* bash-bang-splat
() nil#
&& and+, and-and+, amper-amper, succeeds-then*
|| or+, or-or+, fails-then*


-- NOTES --

! bang comes from old card punch phenom where punching ! code made a
loud noise; however, this pronunciation is used in the (non-
computerized) publishing and typesetting industry in the U.S.
too, so ...
Alternatively it could have come from comic books, where the
words each character utters are shown in a "balloon" near that
character's head. When one character shoots another, it is
common to see a balloon pointing at the barrel of the gun to
denote that the gun had been fired, not merely aimed.
That balloon contained the word "!" -- hence, "!" == "Bang!"
! store from FORTH
! dammit as in "quit, dammit!" while exiting vi and hoping one hasn't
clobbered a file too badly
# octothorpe from Bell System (orig. octalthorpe)
# unequal e.g. Modula-2
$ string from BASIC
$ escape from TOPS-10
$ Sonne In the "socialist" countries they used and are using all kinds
of IBM clones (hardware + sw). It was a common practice just
to rename everything (IBM 360 --> ESER 1040 etc.).
Of course the "dollar" sign had to be renamed - it became the
"international currency symbol" which looks like a circle with
4 rays spreading from it:
____
\/ \/
/ \
\ /
/\____/\

Because it looks like a (small) shining sun, in the German
Democratic Republic it was usually called "Sonne" (sun).
& donald duck from the Danish "Anders And", which means "Donald Duck"
* splat from DEC "spider" glyph
* Nathan Hale "I have but one asterisk for my country."
* funny button at Pacific Bell, * was referred to by employees as the "funny
button", which did not please management at all when it became
part of the corporate logo of Pacific Telesis, the holding
company ...
*/ times-div from FORTH
= quadrathorpe half an octothorpe
- bithorpe half a quadrathorpe (So what's a monothorpe?)
. put Victor Borge's Phonetic Punctuation which dates back to the
middle 1950's
/ across APL
/ compress APL
/ reduce APL
/ replicate APL
/ shilling from the British currency symbol
:= becomes e.g. Pascal
; go-on Algol68
< left chevron from the military: worn vertically on the sleeve to signify
rating
< bra from quantum mechanics
<> unequal e.g. Pascal
> right chevron see "< left chevron"
> ket from quantum mechanics
@ snable-a from Danish; may translate as "trunk-a"
@ trunk-a "trunk" = "elephant nose"
@ strudel as in Austrian apple cake
@ fetch from FORTH
\ scan APL
\ expand APL
^ and from formal logic
^ pointer from PASCAL
^ upper-than cf. > and <
_ gets some alternative representation of underscore resembles a
backarrow
_ dash as distinct from '-' == minus
` execute from shell command substitution
{} Tuborgs from advertizing for well-known Danish beverage
{} curly chevr. see "< left chevron"
{} hitchcocks from the old Alfred Hitchcock show, with the stylized profile
of the man
{} chipp. br. after Chippendale chairs
| broken line EBCDIC has two vertical bars, one solid and one broken.
~ enyay from the Spanish n-tilde
() nil LISP

paradigm
noun [C] FORMAL
a model of something, or a very clear and typical example of something:
Some of these educators are hoping to produce a change in the current cultural paradigm.

paradigmatic adjective FORMAL


prove (SHOW) Show phonetics
verb [T; L] proved, proved, ESP. US proven
1 to show a particular result after a period of time:
The operation proved a complete success.
The dispute over the song rights proved impossible to resolve.
[L (+ to be)] The new treatment has proved to be a disaster.

2 prove yourself to show that you are good at something:
I wish he'd stop trying to prove himself all the time.


profound (EXTREME)
adjective
felt or experienced very strongly or in an extreme way:
His mother's death when he was aged six had a very profound effect on him.
The invention of the contraceptive pill brought about profound changes in the lives of women.
Those two lines of poetry express perfectly the profound sadness of loss.
My grandfather has a profound mistrust of anything new or foreign.
There was a note of profound irritation in his voice.

profoundly
Society has changed so profoundly over the last fifty years.
We are all profoundly grateful for your help and encouragement.

profundity
noun [U] FORMAL