Collection of French proverbs, sayings and popular sayings in France translated into Italian, as testimony to the wisdom of this grumpy but nice people.
French idioms
- The man without shelter is like a bird without a nest.
- Who keeps silent consents.
- Everyone always returns to his first love.
- Nothing harms the laws as much as their number.
- Revenge is a dish that should be served cold.
- The night brings counsel.
- Small gifts retain great friendships.
- The envious die, but not the envy.
- Excess in everything is a defect.
- Appearances are often deceiving.
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- Hope makes you live.
- The dress does not make the priest.
- Hotel and fish in three days become poison.
- A wise fool is more stupid than an ignorant fool.
- Appetite comes with eating.
- A good connoisseur, half a word.
- Time is money.
- From the mad judge, quick sentence.
- One nail crushes the other.
- Salt comes from the sea and evil from women.
- The woman laughs when she can and cries when she wants.
- Cemeteries are full of indispensable people.
- The dog cannot be prevented from barking and the liar from lying.
- Better to suffer for loving someone than not having loved.
- Time is a great teacher, it is said, the problem is that it kills its students.
- Love, coughing and smoking cannot be kept secret.
- Out of sight out of mind.
- If youth knew, if old age could.
- Loves start with rings and end with knives.
- Love, cough, smoke and money cannot be hidden for long.
- Love does not follow the criteria of reason so it is not worth trying to interpret his preferences.
- Friendship sometimes ends in love, but love rarely ends in friendship.
- Good lawyer, bad neighbor.
- You cannot be lucky at the game and at the same time in love.
- Women are made of tongue only, as foxes are made of tail only.
French sayings
- Lucky at the game, unlucky in love.
- No news, good news.
- Beautiful things do not last long.
- Two precautions are better than one.
- A good connoisseur, a few words.
- Without bread and without wine, love is nothing.
- The truth is like oil. It always rises to the surface.
- To make a mistake is human.
- Woman and melon barely know each other.
- A straw man is worthy of a golden woman.
- A door must be completely open or completely closed.
- Do what you must, what can happen.
- Drop by drop the water pierces the stone.
- Wanting is power.
- Constancy and commitment help to solve businesses deemed impossible.
- Think twice before speaking, you will speak twice better.
- Unity is strength.
- Take the first advice from a woman and not the second.
- A blow of the tongue hurts more than a blow of the sword.
- Big clouds, stormy weather.
- The value of silence is higher than that of the word.
- We must never say: fountain, I will not drink your water.
- The word is silver, but silence is golden.
- There are no frigid women, only clumsy men.
- A swallow is not spring.
- Dirty clothes are washed in the family.
- An alerted man is worth two.
- You must turn the tongue seven times in the mouth before speaking.
- Nail drives away nail.
- Love makes time pass and time makes love pass.
- Barking dog does not bite.
- Hunger brings the wolf out of the woods.
- Everything is fine, what ends well.
- Female and canvas, they are not chosen by candlelight.
- The freedom of one ends where the freedom of the other begins.
French proverbs
- If youth knew, if old age could.
- Luck is blind.
- Sermon and melon, everything in its moment.
- Country you go, custom you find.
- Without the fools and the fools, the lawyers would bring their hooves.
- What is conceived well is clearly stated.
- Wise is the judge who listens and late judges.
- Everyone is the architect of his own luck.
- Better to give without promising than to promise without keeping.
- Whoever steals an egg steals an ox.
- Look for a needle in a haystack.
- Those who doubt are not mistaken.
- Love drives away jealousy.
- What women want, God wants it.
- Dogs and whores only provoke arguments.
- When the apricot is in bloom, day and night have the same duration.
- If you want to be happy one day, get drunk; a month, kill your pig; one year married; all his life, he becomes a gardener.
- Crows with crows are never blinded.
- To consider yourself a friend you must have eaten a quintal of salt together.
- Mourning of dead woman, lasts until the door.
- Rolling stone does not accumulate dirt.
- Business shapes men.
- Sweetness gets more than violence.
- The ink of a schoolboy is more sacred than the blood of a martyr.
- Tell a woman once she is beautiful, and the devil will repeat it ten times a day.
- The more the shit moves, the more it stinks.
- Big fish eat little ones.
- A small spark generates a large fire.
- The poor are not part of the relatives.
- Poverty is not vice.
- Opportunity makes the thief.
- We take more flies with honey than with vinegar.
- Conflicts would not last as long if the wrongs were only on one side.
- The evil of others is only a dream.
- Clouds on the mountain, do not wet the countryside.
- Better little than nothing.