Eastern African Proverbs

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AfricanProverbs Posted: Tue, Mar 4 2008 21:49

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Here are some proverbs from Eastern Africa:

• All monkeys cannot hang on the same branch.
• An orphaned calf licks its own back.
• The man may be the head of the home but the wife is the heart.
• Funeral is for us all.
• Happiness is like a field you can harvest every season.
• The heart of the wise man lies quiet like limpid water.
• A man's heart is not a sack open to all.
• What is inflated too much will break into fragments.
• To one who does not know, a small garden is a forest.
• He who learns, teaches.
• Evil enters like a needle and spreads like an oak tree.
• The cattle is as good as the pasture in which it grazes.
• Only a medicine man gets rich by sleeping.
• A close friend can become a close enemy.
• One who recovers from sickness, forgets about God.
• When the heart overflows, it comes out through the mouth.
• Confiding a secret to an unworthy person is like carrying grain in a bag with a hole.
• When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion.
• Unless you call out, who will open the door?
• A loose tooth will not rest until it's pulled out.
• A home without a woman is like a barn without cattle.
• The fool speaks, the wise man listens.
• A too modest man goes hungry.
• He who conceals his disease cannot expect to be cured.
• Where there is no shame, there is no honour.
• If you find no fish you have to eat bread.
• A good deed is something one returns.
• He who receives a gift does not measure it.
• He who does not know one thing knows another.
• Talking with one another is loving one another.
• Thunder is not yet rain.
• Absence makes the heart forget.
• Virtue is better than wealth.
• Home affairs are not talked about on the public square.
• Seeing is different from being told.
• Don't take another mouthful before you have swallowed what is in your mouth.
• Don't kick a sleeping dog.
• A cutting word is worse than a bowstring, a cut may heal, but the cut of the tongue does not.
• One must talk little, and listen much.
• Ingratitude is sooner or later fatal to its author.
• Not all the flowers of a tree produce fruit.
• Too large a mousel chokes the child.
• A home without a mother is a desert.
• It is better that trials come to you in the beginning than that they come to you at the end.
• No one knows caution like regret.