This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Italian Proverbs
One who makes his bed must lie in it.
Determination | People | Will | Work |
Preventing someone from falling is better than helping him get up.
People |
The buckets take to fighting with the well, and get their heads broken.
Life | Life | Little | Practice | Precept | Sense | Govern |
One devil drives out another.
Better | Organization | Virtue | Virtue |
That which doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.
Dawn | Evolution | History | Individual | Life | Life | Sense | Survival | Truth |
The dog that is quarrelsome and not strong, woe to his hide.
Memory | Order | Rank |
The devil is bad because he is old.
Ability | Age | Art | Control | Culture | Humor | Memory | Need | Time | Work | World | Art |
The liar is not believed when he speaks the truth.
Man |
Two women and a goose make a market.
Doubt | Irony | Life | Life | Means | Need | Plenty | Self | Superiority | Understanding | Work | World | Afraid |
What a fool does in the end, the wise man does in the beginning.
When a wife sins the husband is never innocent.
Education | Ideas | Justify | Knowledge | Learning | Literature | Need | People | Question | Study | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Value |
War makes robbers, and peace hangs them.
Authenticity | Good | Life | Life | Meaning | Means | Mystery | Thought | Worth | Thought |
The mills of god grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly small.
Comfort | Time | Will | Loss |
There is no need to bind up one's head before it is broken.
Disgrace | Think |
When all men say you are an ass it is time to bray.
Failure | Future | Life | Life | Mistake | Present | Purpose | Purpose | Question | Right | Failure |
The world wags on with three things: doing, undoing, and pretending.
Ability | Adventure | Character | Comfort | Convictions | Daring | Ideas | Injustice | Injustice | Love | Man | Men | Qualities | Sound | Suffering | Talking | Time | Universe | Will | Witness | Blessed | Old | Winning |
Very seldom does any good thing arise but there comes an ugly phantom of a caricature of it.
Birth | Childhood | Death | Irony | Paradox | Religion | Time | Work |
When the fox preaches, take care of yourselves, hens.
Self |
While two dogs are fighting for a bone, a third runs away with it.
The virtue of silence is a great piece of knowledge.
Public | Question |