Don’t (Never) count your chickens before they hatch is a kind of proverb, and it is advice worth remembering; it means “do not make firm plans for something that might not actually happen, or don’t make assumptions about anything that doesn’t hasn’t happened yet.” Many of the oldest proverbs in English are warnings beginning with don’t […]

This wonderful saying was created by the great English poet Alexander Pope in 1711, and it means that “fools do not hesitate to go where wiser people fear to walk.” It is ironic wisdom—partly an insult to fools, but also partly an ironic comment on the positive side of fools. The phrase hints that fools may […]

This proverb, a fish rots from the head down, means that when organizations or nations fail, or become corrupt, the leadership is to blame; weaknesses and other problems come from leaders. This saying appears in many nations and languages and is probably quite ancient, although nobody knows where it started. Some claim that the oldest […]

The phrase to give the benefit of the doubt means “to believe or trust, when one is uncertain.” Usually we say this about trusting a person—we give a person the benefit of the doubt. The benefit is our trust. The doubt means that we don’t know if we should or should not trust this person. So […]

To be on cloud nine means to be very happy—blissful—such as when falling in love, or getting one’s dream job. The phrase appears to have mystical origins. Mysticism is the practice of experiencing the divine—God, Buddha, Brahma, Tao, etc.—through meditation. This experience has often been described as like walking on air or being in the clouds—to feel […]