This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Italian Proverbs
The buyer has need of a hundred eyes, the seller of but one.
Design |
The ass does not know the worth of this tail till he has lost it.
Books | Character | Effort | Hope | Judgment | Will | Work | Realism |
One enemy is too much, and a hundred friends are not enough.
Smooth words make smooth ways.
World |
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 |
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 |
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 |