Egyptian Proverbs

Enjoy dozens of witty and insightful Egyptian proverbs and idioms that have been passed down from one generation to the next for hundreds of years!

• There grows no wheat where there is no grain.
• Maat, who links the universal to the terrestrial, the divine with the human, is incomprehensible to the cerebral intelligence.
• All is within yourself. Know your most inward self and look for what corresponds with it in nature.
• The way of knowledge is narrow.
• Envious greed must govern to possess, and ambition must possess to govern.
• Understanding develops by degrees.
• If his heart rules him, his conscience will soon take the place of the rod.
• The body is the house of god. That is why it is said, “Man know yourself.”
• The seed cannot sprout upwards without simultaneously sending roots into the ground.
• Men need images. Lacking them, they invent idols. Better then to found the images on realities that lead the true seeker to the source.
• One foot isn’t enough to walk with.
• The only thing that is humiliating is helplessness.
• A man’s heart is his own Neter.
• Altruism is the mark of a superior being.
• Growth in consciousness doesn’t depend on the will of the intellect or its possibilities but on the intensity of the inner urge.
• The key to all problems is the problem of consciousness.
• What reveals itself to me ceases to be mysterious for me alone. If I unveil it to anyone else, he hears mere words which betray the living sense: Profanation, but never revelation.
• Love is one thing, knowledge is another.
• The best and shortest road towards knowledge of truth is Nature.
• Leave him in error who loves his error.
• By knowing, one reaches belief. By doing, one gains conviction. When you know, dare.
• If you would know yourself, take yourself as a starting point and go back to its source; your beginning will disclose your end.
• True teaching is not an accumulation of knowledge; it is an awaking of consciousness that goes through successive stages.
• It is better not to know and to know that one does not know, than presumptuously to attribute some random meaning to symbols.
• Always watch and follow nature.
• For every joy, there is a price to be paid.
• To know means to record in one’s memory; but to understand means to blend with the thing and to assimilate it oneself.
• If you would build something solid, don’t work with wind: always look for a fixed point, something you know that is stable … yourself.
• Exuberance is a good stimulus towards action, but the inner light grows in silence and concentration.
• When the governing class isn’t chosen for quality, it is chosen for material wealth: this always means decadence, the lowest stage a society can reach.
• An answer brings no illumination unless the question has matured to a point where it gives rise to this answer, which thus becomes its fruit. Therefore, learn how to put a question.
• The man who knows how to lead one of his brothers towards what he has known may one day be saved by that very brother.
• Grain must return to the earth, die, and decompose for new growth to begin.
• Have the wisdom to abandon the values of a time that has passed and picked out the constituents of the future. An environment must be suited to the age and men to their environment.
• The plant reveals what is in the seed.
• There are two kinds of error: blind credulity and piecemeal criticism. Never believe a word without putting its truth to the test.
• The first concerning the ‘secrets’: all cognition comes from inside; we are initiated only by ourselves, but the Master gives the keys.
• If you are searching for a Neter, observe Nature!
• If one tries to navigate unknown waters, one runs the risk of shipwreck.
• Every man is rich in excuses to safeguard his prejudices, his instincts, and his opinions.
• Experience will show you, a master can only point the way.
• People bring about their own undoing through their tongues.
• Our senses serve to affirm, not to know.
• Man, know yourself … and you shalt know the gods.
• Know the world in yourself. Never look for yourself in the world, for this would be to project your illusion.
• What you are doing does not matter so much as what you are learning from doing it.
• As to deserving, know that the gift of heaven is free; this gift of knowledge is so great that no effort whatever could hope to “deserve” it.
• Organization is impossible unless those who know the laws of harmony lay the foundation.
• Every man must act in the rhythm of his time; such is wisdom.
• It is no use whatever preaching wisdom to men: you must inject it into their blood.

For thousands more proverbs and words of wisdom, collected from over 40 countries, check out Proverbs from Around the World!