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Ashanti Proverbs (92)

Ashanti, Asante (dialect), or Asante Twi, is spoken by over
2.8 million people in the Ashanti Region of Ghana.

No tree ever bore fruit without first having flowers.

When your gold dust is becoming finished, then you become prudent.

Even if your mother is not a good woman,
she is your mother nevertheless.

A crab does not give birth to a bird.

When you have caught the mother hen,
you pick up the chickens without difficulty.

All destinies are not alike.

By the time the fool has learned to play the game,
the players have dispersed.

A word that when spoken you would wish back,
let it remain in your head.

If one could know where death resided,
one would never stop there.

A path has ears.

Personal beauty does not pay a debt.

Death has the key to open the miser's chest.

When you tap the pot, you see where the crack is.

The herbs to apply to a snake bite are quickly plucked.

It is the woman who knows her husband,

Wealth is a fine thing, but to find an heir is not easy.

When the fool is told a proverb,
the meaning of it has to be explained to him.

When a big bird does not trouble to fly it goes to sleep hungry.

The poor man has no friend.

Hunger is felt by a slave and hunger is felt by a king.

It is the path you do not fear that the wild beast catches you on.

A river you would not bathe in is not drunk from.

A good case is not difficult to state.

The poor man and the rich man do not play together.

Of hunger and debt, debt is preferable.

When an army suffers defeat,
a horn is not blown in its honor.

It is the feathers on a fowl that make it big.

No one puts his finger in another man's mouth
and then beats him over the head.

One falsehood spoils a thousand truths.

It is poverty that causes the free man to become a slave.

No one who is following an elephant
has to knock the dew off the grass.

He who is guilty is the one who has much to say.

When your wife is a woman of no morals,
then she might as well be some one else's harlot.

The poor man and the rich man do not play together.

The conversation between husband and wife no one knows about.

What is not wanted is not turned back for.

When a man is disliked he is blamed for all kinds of things.

The physician's fee is not paid till the sickness is over.

No one buys a cow's footprint.

When one would climb a tree, one begins from the bottom
and not from the top.

The dog says he will never commit adultery, but when he does so,
he commits it with his own father’s wife.

When rain beats on a leopard it wets him,
but it does not wash out his spots.

In truth there is no deceit.

It is one man who kills an elephant, but many people who eat its flesh.

No one dispenses with the thumb in tying a knot.

A child does not look into the soup pot for nothing.

The poor man has no friend.

Ancient things remain in the ears.

No one makes a fowl taboo and then eats its chickens.

Fire and gunpowder do not sleep together.

When a king has good counselors, then his reign is peaceful.

A knave for one is a good man for another.

Your house is your own house.

No one sends a child on an errand and looks
to see if he is pleased or not.

Money is sharper than a sword.

It is only when a child cries that he is given the breast.

A word that when spoken you would wish back,
let it remain in your head.

No one sells his laying hen without a good reason.

What is bad luck for one man is good luck for another.

It is a small thing that is taken to measure a big thing.

An army is driven back by courage and not by insults, however many.

There is no medicine to cure hatred.

The bird weaves its nest by going and coming.

A wife is like a blanket; when you cover yourself with it,
it irritates you, and yet if you cast it aside you feel cold.

Even if the mouse were the size of a cow,
he would be the cat's slave nevertheless.

The enemy of a chief is he who has grown up with him from childhood.

It is owing to being disturbed that a snake bites.

One bird in your hand is better than ten birds in the sky.

The biting fly gets nothing by alighting on the back of the tortoise.

The dog says he will never commit adultery, but when he does so,
he commits it with his own father's wife.

All animals sweat, but the hair on them causes us not to notice it.

One man's road does not go far without meeting another's.

A sheep does not give birth to a goat.

A slave does not choose his master.

A snake does not bite a man without cause.

When you have five wives, you have five tongues.

No one dreams of going to where they will kill him.

It is difficult to throw a stone at a lizard which is clinging to a pot.

The biting fly has no one to come to his aid in trouble.

A wax bullet is not used to shoot an elephant.

When the hunter comes from the bush carrying mushrooms,
he is not asked for news of his hunting.

Death is not a sleeping room that can be entered and come out of again.

The vulture has not a good name and its body has not a good smell.

There is nothing that hurts like shame.

When war has come, rumors have come.

When a man is disliked he is blamed for a,/br>ll kinds of things.

The bad bird fouls its own nest.

A stranger is like a child.

If plain water is satisfying enough,
then the fish would not take the hook.

When an animal is not going to bite you,
it does not show its teeth at you.

No one boasts of what belongs to another.

When a fly does not get up off a dead body, he is buried with it.

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