Japanese Proverbs

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

• Virtue is not knowing but doing.
• Old people are everyone’s treasures.
• Don’t hide your head and fail to hide your rear.
• Better to be a crystal and to be broken, than to be a tile upon the housetop.
• The inarticulate speak longest.
• Darkness reigns at the foot of the lighthouse.
• Some people like to make of life a garden, and to walk only within its paths.
• Ten men, ten minds.
• The person who admits ignorance shows it once; the one who tries to hide it shows it often.
• Control your emotion or it will control you.
• A sutra in a horse’s ear.
• Let what is past flow away downstream.
• There’s always a way out of difficulty.
• Time spent laughing is time spent with the Gods.
• You can’t see the whole sky through a bamboo tube.
• When you’re dying of thirst, it’s too late to think about digging a well.
• If you make a mistake, don’t hesitate to correct it.
• Getting money is like digging with a needle; spending it is like water soaking into sand.
• Poor is the person who does not know when he has had enough.
• Even a kappa (“water imp”) can get carried away by the river.
• A good husband is healthy and absent.
• Even a fool has one talent.
• Idiots don’t catch colds.
• Money grows on the tree of persistence.
• Ignorance is bliss.
• Always rise after a fall.
• The reverse side also has a reverse side.
• It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive disenchanted.
• Who travels for love finds a thousand miles not longer than one.
• The ground hardens after rain.
• A fox who borrows the skin of a tiger.
• Where poverty comes in at the door, love flies out the window.
• Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.
• Everyone makes mistakes. That’s why there is an eraser on every pencil.
• Instead of worrying, a strong man wears a smile.
• A fallen blossom doesn’t return to the branch.
• When someone is really hungry, then there is no such thing as bad food.
• One kind word can warm three winter months.
• The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.
• Gossip about a person and his shadow will appear.
• Wisdom and virtue are like the two wheels of a cart.
• Fellow suffers pity each other.
• Respect old people, and be gentle with children.
• If you believe everything you read, better not read.
• Too much is as bad as too little.
• If you wait, there will come nectar—like fair weather.
• Too many captains will steer the ship up a mountain.
• One cannot quarrel without an opponent.
• Prevention is better than a cure.
• To endure what is unendurable is true endurance.

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