French proverbs: sayings and idioms


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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.

18 Common French Idioms, Expressions & Sayings (April 2024)


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