WISDOM FROM ANCIENT AFRICA ( PRE COLONIALISM)
Wisdom from the Yoruba Kingdom translated into English.
- A great affair covers up a small matter.
- A man with a cough cannot conceal himself.
- The first morsel never complains of insufficient sauce.
- A proverb is the horse that can carry one swiftly to the discovery of ideas.
- A stammerer would eventually say father. After we fry the fat, we see what is left.
- Anyone who sees beauty and does not look at it will soon be poor.
- As long as there are lice in the seams of the garment there must be bloodstains on the fingernails.
- As there is guilt in innocence, there is innocence in guilt.
- Ashes always fly back in the face of him who throws them.
- Because friendship is pleasant, we partake of our friend’s entertainment; not because we have not enough to eat in our own house.
- Covetousness is the father of unfulfilled desires.
- Fear a silent man. He has lips like a drum For no man could be blessed without the acceptance of his own head.
- Gossips always suspect that others are talking about them.
- He who eats well speaks well or it is a question of insanity.
- He who throws a stone in the market will hit his relative.
- ‘I nearly killed the bird.’ No one can eat ‘nearly’ in a stew.
- If something that was going to cut off your head only knocked off your cap, you should be grateful.
- If we stand tall it is because we stand on the backs of those who came before us.
- If you damage the character of another, you damage your own.
- If you don’t sell your head, no one will buy it.
- It is a thief that can trace the footsteps of another thief on a rock.
- It takes a whole village to raise a child.
- Many words do not fill a basket.
- Medicine left in the bottle can’t help.
- No one can uproot the tree which God has planted.
- Nobody knows the mysteries which lie at the bottom of the ocean.
- One takes care of one’s own: when a bachelor roasts yam, he share’s it with his sheep.
- One who waits for chance may wait a year.
- Only what you have combated for will last.
- Patching makes a garment last long.
- Silence is an attribute of the dead; he who is alive speaks.
- Stretch your hands as far as they reach, grab all you can grab.
- The bell rings loudest in your own home.
- The butterfly that brushes against thorns will tear its wings.
- The hand of the child cannot reach the shelf, nor the hand of the adult get through the neck of the gourd.
- The man who has bread to eat does not appreciate the severity of a famine.
- The person who forgives gains a victory in the dispute.
- The person who has been a slave from birth does not value rebellion.
- The pot-lid is always badly off: the pot gets all the sweet, the lid nothing but steam.
- The young cannot teach tradition to the old. The young cock crows as he hears the old one.
- Those who die through ignorance are many; those who die because they are intelligent are few.
- Truth came to market but could not be sold; however, we buy lies with ready cash.
- We must blame the thief first before we say that where the owner put her property improper.
- What you give you get, ten times over.
- When hunger gets inside you, nothing else can.
- When the door is closed, you must learn to slide across the crack of the sill.
- When the rain falls in the valley, the hill gets angry.
- When the white man is about to leave a garden for good, he wrecks it.
- When wood breaks it can be repaired, but ivory breaks forever.
- When you stand with the blessings of your mother and God, it matters not who stands against you.
- When your neighbor’s horse falls into a pit, you should not rejoice at it, for your own child may fall into it too.
- Where you will sit when you are old shows where you stood in youth.
- Words are like spears: Once they leave your lips they can never come back.
- Work is the medicine for poverty.
- You cannot shave a man’s head in his absence.
- You can’t stop a pig from wallowing in the mud.
- You must be willing to die in order to live.
- Work is the medicine for poverty. (YES THIS IS REPEATED TWICE BECAUSE OF HOW IMPORTANT IT IS)
NOW SHARE WITH THE WORLD.