40 Arabic Proverbs and Sayings, Word by Word

Arabic Vocabulary Lists > Arabic Proverbs and Sayings

An Arabic proverb is a مثل (mathal), plural أمثال (amthal). The 40 Arabic proverbs and sayings below are grouped by theme, each traced to a published collection: 10 Classical, 19 Egyptian and 5 Levantine proverbs, plus 6 Egyptian idioms. Every entry gives the Arabic, a transliteration, a word-by-word gloss, the closest English saying, and when you would actually say it.

Transliteration: kh as in Scottish loch, gh a gargled r, ʿ for ع, ʾ a glottal stop, no dots under emphatic letters. Egyptian entries follow Cairo speech (g for ج, ʾ for ق). Classical entries are fully vowelled.

Arabic proverbs about patience

The Arabic proverb for patience is الصبر مفتاح الفرج (is-sabr muftah il-faraj), patience is the key to relief. Taymur files it as a piece of wisdom that has come to be used as a proverb. The other four make the same point through a camel driver, a hungry horse, tomorrow and the dead past.

Huxley's Syrian version puts someone off with empty promises; Burckhardt's Cairo version, a donkey waiting for clover, urges patience. That is why each row gives a situation and not just a translation.

Arabic proverbs about work and effort

Work proverbs in Arabic praise preparation and skill and are hard on idle hands. Three of these five are Classical, so you will see them in print more than you hear them.

In al-Maydani's story, the shoemaker Hunayn fell out with a Bedouin and dropped one shoe on his road, then the other further on. The Bedouin went back for the first shoe, and Hunayn took his camel. He got home with two shoes and nothing else.

Arabic proverbs about friends, neighbours and other people

Choose your friends with care, then keep them even when they are hard work: that is the advice of the first four. The last four are about people in general, and all of them are Egyptian.

Luqman first said "many a brother" as a jibe: in al-Maydani's story, the woman's so-called brother was her lover. Taymur explains the dressing proverb: food follows your appetite, clothes are worn to be seen. Our page on clothes in Arabic across four dialects quotes it.

Arabic proverbs about money

The money proverbs disagree with each other. The first says live within your means; the second says spend, and more will come.

Al-Maydani notes that ضَيَّعْتِ (dayyaʿti) stays feminine whoever you say it to, because ʿAmr first said it to his ex-wife Dakhtanus when, remarried, she sent to him for milk in a lean year.

Arabic proverbs about speech and silence

Most Arabic proverbs about speech say talk less, and talk gently. The Egyptian one about the tongue and the horse rhymes three times: husanak, sanak, hanak.

Al-Maydani attributes the sword got there first to Dabba ibn Udd, blamed after he had already killed his son's killer inside the sacred precinct.

Arabic proverbs about family and fate

Family proverbs in Arabic say children take after their parents and parents cannot see their children's faults. Fate proverbs say luck outweighs skill, and that what is written will happen.

Taymur notes that a feddan holds 24 qirats, so the luck proverb weighs one part luck against twenty-four of skill. Al-Maydani records that Rajab can stand for a whole year. The monkey proverb has a feminine twin, ghazala, among our animal words, and the three animal proverbs on that page.

Arabic idioms: six fixed expressions from Cairo

An Arabic idiom is a fixed phrase whose meaning is figurative, not a complete piece of advice. All six below are in Ahmad Taymur's dictionary of Egyptian figurative expressions, al-Kinayat al-ʿAmmiyya.

We could not find three popular expressions in the collections we used, so they stay out of the table: على راسي (ʿala rasi, on my head) and من عيوني (min ʿuyuni, from my eyes), both meaning gladly, and the Levantine endearment تقبرني (tuqburni, may you bury me). Single words such as yalla and khalas are among our everyday Arabic slang words.

One proverb in three varieties

Many Arabic proverbs exist in more than one register, with the image changed to suit local life. These five turn up in two or three of our sources, which were compiled in 12th-century Nishapur, in Cairo in the 1810s and again in the early 20th century, and in Syria around 1900.

The image follows the household: a Cairo quilt, a Syrian bed, a jar instead of a pot. Al-Maydani's sheep becomes a Syrian goat, and Classical rijl (leg) becomes colloquial kirʿub.

How to use an Arabic proverb without sounding like a textbook

Use a proverb as a reply, not an opener. Burckhardt saw that Cairenes quoted proverbs to sum up the moral of an event: a friend's cousin turns down a good job and now wants it back, and you say fi s-sayfi dayyaʿti l-laban.

Match the register to the room: Classical proverbs for writing and speeches, Egyptian ones with friends in Cairo. Our Egyptian Arabic and Levantine Arabic pages list courses and books for each dialect. For greetings and directions you want everyday Arabic phrases, not proverbs.

Copying a short proverb such as عِشْ رَجَبًا تَرَ عَجَبًا (ʿish rajaban tara ʿajaba) by hand fixes its spelling; our free Arabic handwriting worksheets cover every letter in it.

Where these proverbs come from

Every proverb above was checked in one of four published collections, and every idiom in a fifth. Entry numbers refer to the numbered entries in each book. Sources checked September 2026.

• Classical: Abu al-Fadl al-Maydani (d. 1124), Majmaʿ al-Amthal, ed. Muhammad Muhyi al-Din ʿAbd al-Hamid, 2 vols (Beirut: Dar al-Maʿrifa), read in the al-Maktaba al-Shamela edition.
• Egyptian: Ahmad Taymur, al-Amthal al-ʿAmmiyya, 2nd edition, read in the Arabic Wikisource transcription. Idioms: Taymur, al-Kinayat al-ʿAmmiyya, arranged by headword, read in the Hindawi edition scan.
• Egyptian, 19th century: John Lewis Burckhardt, Arabic Proverbs, or the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (London, 1830; 2nd ed. 1875), proverbs he heard in Cairo, read in the 1875 edition scan.
• Levantine: Henry Minor Huxley, "Syrian Songs, Proverbs, and Stories", Journal of the American Oriental Society 23 (1902), pp. 222-234, read in the digitised offprint. We checked his Arabic against the page images.

Quran verses and hadith are not folk proverbs, however often they are quoted like one, so they are not listed. إن شاء الله (in shaʾ Allah, God willing) and its relatives belong with religious phrases, which are not proverbs.

Frequently asked questions

What is a famous Arabic proverb?

Rubba akhin laka lam talidhu ummuk, many a brother of yours was not born to your mother. It is attributed to Luqman ibn ʿAd in al-Maydani's 12th-century collection Majmaʿ al-Amthal (no. 1546), and today people say it about a friend who is as close as family. In Luqman's story it was sarcastic: the woman's so-called brother was not her brother at all.

What is the Arabic proverb about patience?

Is-sabr muftah il-faraj, patience is the key to relief. Ahmad Taymur records it in his collection of Egyptian proverbs (no. 1730) as a piece of wisdom that circulates like a proverb, said to someone going through a hard time. The Levantine one is sawwaq jamal w-mistaʿjil la yisir: you cannot drive a camel and be in a hurry.

Is a hadith or a Quran verse a proverb?

No. A Quran verse is scripture and a hadith is a reported saying of the Prophet Muhammad; neither is folk wisdom, and this page does not list them as proverbs. The line is blurry in places: al-Maydani notes that al-jar thumma d-dar and ar-rafiq qabl at-tariq are also narrated from the Prophet. Religious formulas such as inshallah are a separate subject.

Are Egyptian proverbs different from MSA proverbs?

Yes, in wording and grammar. Classical proverbs, the kind collected by al-Maydani, carry case endings and old vocabulary. Egyptian proverbs, collected by Ahmad Taymur, use Cairo grammar and often rhyme, like lisanak husanak, in suntu sanak. Some ideas exist in both: every sheep hangs by its own leg is in al-Maydani and in Burckhardt's Cairo collection, and Huxley heard it in Syria about a goat.

What is the Arabic version of a bird in the hand?

In Egyptian Arabic it is ʿasfur fi idak wala kurki tayir, a sparrow in your hand rather than a crane in flight (Taymur, no. 1907). Burckhardt's 1830 collection from Cairo gives a longer version: a thousand cranes in the air are not worth one sparrow in the fist. Taymur also lists a ten-birds form: one sparrow in the hand rather than ten in the tree.

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