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English Proverbs

  • Learn by doing.
  • Murder will out.
  • A liberal is a man who tells other people how to spend their money.
  • Professionals built the Titanic - amateurs the ark.

- cited by Frank S Pepper, Handbook of the 20th Century Quotes, source BBC radio, The News Quiz, October 27, 1979

  • Recession is when your neighbour loses his job; depression is when you lose yours.
  • A right sometimes sleeps but it never dies.

- Legal Maxim

  • Rights are lost by disuse.

- Legal Maxim

  • The road to ruin is always kept in good repair.
  • Never give a sucker an even break.
  • When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

- popularised by John N. Mitchell, Attorney General under Richard M Nixon

  • We shall overcome, we shall overcome,

We shall overcome some day.
Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe
We shall overcome some day.
- song associated with the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, adapted from a Baptist hymn

  • Western Wind, when wilt thou blow,

That the small rain down can rain?
Christ if my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again.

  • Who loves not wine, women, and song

Remains a fool his whole life long.

  • Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
  • Now I lay me down to sleep;

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

  • From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties

And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord deliver us!

  • A good beginning makes a good ending.
  • He laughs best who laughs last.
  • One man's meat is another man's poison.
  • A proverb is the child of experience.
  • A maid that laughs is half taken.

- quoted in John Ray, English Proverbs

  • A joy that's shared is a joy made double.

- recorded by John Ray, English Proverbs

  • Revenge is a dish that should be eaten cold.
  • Time and tide wait for no man.
  • What is done is well done quickly enough.

- favourite proverbial saying by Augustus Caesar, quoted in Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars