African proverbs

MISC

• The goat that cries the loudest is not the one that will eat the most.
• It is the self-love of the king parrot that made him become a talkative.
• The owl is the wisest of all birds because the more it sees, the less it talks.
• If gold rusts, what will iron do?
• A masquerade does not perform to an outside audience until he performs well at the home base.
• How can man be remembered when the giant trees in the forest are soon forgotten.
• Dead though the oil-palm may be, the maggot in it lives on.
• When a fire starts from the shrine, no precaution can be possible.
• Beetles that roll balls out of human faeces demand to be hidden away from the rich man, because there is nothing he wouldn't buy.
• Our elders quote the cock as saying that "it would not be good if one becomes the only person in the world, and that is why they crow every morning to show their number".
• A strong man is remembered on the day of the fight, and a gluttony on the day pounded yam is surplus.
• Beauty is not sold and eaten.
• A masquerade is not a spirit only because of its mask.
• When a woman prepares a dish which others find unpalatable, she says that she prepared it to suit her own taste.
• At a time a cockerel matures, it begins to crow to tell the world the time of day.
• They are the gods themselves that white-wash the fruits of the pumpkins.
• However much the world degenerates, man shall never find worms in salt.
• A diviner cannot accurately divine his own future.
• A lizard that fell from the top of a tree wastes its time looking back to where it fell from; if there was anything good the lizard deserved, it could not have missed it while it was there on top of the tree.
• It is what the eyes of one man sees that is described as a boa constrictor.
• Once a cock begins to crow, it never again becomes dumb.
• He whose throat is longer than his arm must pray constantly for gods' protection.
• It is he who has no place to call at that moves fast through life.
• No frog is tied by a rope to a pond.
• The fly that has no one to advise it follows the corpse into the grave.
• Everybody joins to blame or condemn a child who overthrows the pot of soup.
• Money has the capability of making people laugh; but when they laugh, the foolish ones sometimes forget to close their mouths.
• No one feels the pains that arise from unintended injury.
• The glow-works light the nights, but more so the night that their mother prepares porridge.
• When it is the turn of a man to become the head of a village, he does not need to diviner to tell him that he is destined to rule.
• It is for saying that he has no time that the monkey's body became over-grown with long hairs.
• Our elders say that at sunset, it is one's cloth that one goes to remove from the village square.
• The spirit that keeps one going when one has no choice of what else to do must not be mistaken for valor.
• It is the fortunate person that the physician undertakes to help.
• The gods may still send a gentle breeze when they want to bless us.
• Any wealth that takes only a market week to acquire is sure to contain in it things for which the gods will surely come to make claims.
• A crowd is like a smoldering log which can spark into a flame at any time.
• It is usual of a person found guilty in a trial to boast that he would press his case further