edit, never mind already said.
The pen is mightier than the sword.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
Al que madruga Dios le ayuda. Godott helps those that get up early.
But also
No por mucho madrugar amanece mas temprano. The sun does not rise earlier if you get up sooner.
I identify with the latter.
Maybe not quite proverbial, but I did once have occasion to use the put-down response in
Age before beauty
Pearls before swine
And very satisfying it was.
A couple of biblical ones:
Thou shalt not kill. —Exodus 20:13
Thus sayeth the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side and slay every man his brother…companion… neighbour. —*Exodus 32:27
For every man shall bear his own burden . —Galatians 6:2
Bear ye one another’s burdens , and so fulfill the law of Christ. —Galatians 6:2
“Physician, heal thyself.”
“A physician who treats himself has a fool for a patient.”
And a more generalized thing:
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
Vs. any sane adage about getting over a disease. IOW: don’t take medical advice from Nietzsche.
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
“Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.”
We have the same saying in German that even rhymes “Einem geschenkten Gaul schaut man nicht ins Maul”, but none I know about Greek gifts (which I assume refers to the Trojan Horse).
You may already know, but this saying has a factual basis. Horse gums recede with age, so a quick way to see whether the four-year-old someone is trying to sell you, is actually a lot older, is to check the mouth.
Naturally, a free horse doesn’t need checking.
It is also said in Spanish, though it does not rhyme: A caballo regalado no le mires el diente. As bob_2 rightly writes, there is a reason for this saying.
The Greek gifts are a translation from Latin, from the Aeneid, by Virgil, which reads: Timeō Danaōs et dōna ferentēs. The Danaans are Greeks from the mainland and the present is indeed the Trojan horse.
Early to bed, early to rise,
makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!
There’s no place like home
and
The grass is always greener on the other side
j
ETA - and kinda:
If you want something doing right, do it yourself
and
Jack of all trades, master of none
ETA2
Blood is thicker than water (meaning that family is the most important thing)
and
You can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family
ETA3 (!)
Love thy neighbor
and
Good fences make good neighbors*
*- a personal fave - I had been scratching my head trying to think of the opposite.
I think these are similar. ‘There’s no place like home’ means that no matter where you go, there you are the place that is the most comfortable and safe to you is your home. ‘The grass is always greener on the other side [of the fence]’ is a cynical way of saying that you’re just as well off (or maybe better) where you are.
Good point. I wasn’t thinking straight, there.
j
You can think straight only while climbing stairs.
That was specifically directed to Treppenwitz. (Treppenwitz means staircase wit.)
I am sure some Yiddish speaking person can find a counter to the phrase my uses “Mir lebt un mir lebt un mir stirbt a narr” (We live and we live and we die a fool), something about age and wisdom.
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
– Mark Twain (not really)
Yes, but I’d an aphorism in Yiddish.