African proverbs

From Wikiquote

This is a collection of many African proverbs.

• Bagandan
  • One who loves you, warns you.

• Ethiopian
  • Evil enters like a needle and spreads like an oak tree.
  • The mouse is silent while laboring, but when the baby is conceived, she cries.

• Ghanaian
  • The frog does not eat hot chillies for the lizard to sweat.
  • Where error gets to, correction cannot reach.
  • Got a stone but didn't get a nut to crack, got a nut but didn't get a stone to crack it with.
  • You don't need a light to see someone you know intimately at night.
  • The goat thought it was dirtying its owner's wall till it realized its coat was peeling.
  • If a blind man says he will throw a stone at you, he probably has his foot on one.
  • Ashi vie me duna ashie ga o
    • (Literally - The little hand does not beat the big hand)
    • English equivalent: Monkeys play by sizes
  • So many little things makes a man love a woman in a BIG way.
  • Do good because of tomorrow

• West African
  • What you cannot see during the day, you will not see at night.

• Nigerian
  • If a toad jumps around in the daytime, it is either chasing something or something is chasing it.
  • A bird that flies from the ground onto an anthill does not know that it is still on the ground.
  • When mother cow is cropping grass, her young one watches her mouth.
  • Proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten.
  • The earth moves at different speeds depending on who you are.
  • When the elephants fight it is the grass that suffers.
  • The child that will not allow his parents to sleep through the night must be prepared to stay awake himself.
  • A person once bitten by a snake will be scared by an old rope.
  • When the bush is on fire, the antelope ceases to fear the hunter's bullet.

• Sierra Leone
  • You can't scare a monkey with a dead baboon.

• South African
  • Not everyone who chased the zebra caught it, but he who caught it chased it.
  • I relied on the report of "ntulo" (the blue-headed lizard).

• Zimbabwean
  • A weaning baby that does not cry aloud will die on its mothers back.
  • The forest provides food to the hunter after he is utterly exhausted.
  • One's neighbors' problems do not induce one to lose one's appetite.
  • If you are ugly you must either learn to dance or make love.

• Zulu
  • In the home of the coward, there is no funeral dirge.
  • A fine staff is hewn from flora in foreign lands.
  • A pelt is rolled up while it is still moist.
  • The foot has no place of repose.
  • What has horns must not be hid in a sack.

• Unsorted
  • The path is made by walking.
  • The earth is a beehive; we all enter by the same door but live in different cells.
  • An old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb.
  • Haraka haraka haina baraka
    • Swahili for: "hurry, hurry has no blessing"
  • Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.
  • He who forgives ends the argument