Nigerian Proverbs (440 Proverbs)
- Success is 10% ability, and 90% sweat.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- The gods may still send a gentle breeze when they want to bless us.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- The thirsty fig sits waiting patiently, waiting for the arrival of the rains.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- Until lions have their own historians, accounts of the hunt will always celebrate the hunter.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- When a person regrets endlessly, he gets to pay more for what he regrets.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- When the roots of a tree begin to decay, it spreads death to the branches.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- A child who is carried on the back will not know how far the journey is.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- A hunter who has only one arrow does not shoot with careless aim.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- A one-eyed person does not thank god until he meets a blind person at prayer.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- A woman possessed by demons dreams of toads in red dancing shoes.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- By being grateful, a man makes himself deserving of yet another kindness.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- He who digs a pit for others must invariably fall into it.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- If gold rusts, what will iron do?
(Nigerian Proverb)
- It is a lazy man who says "it is only because I have no time that my farm is overgrown with weeds".
(Nigerian Proverb)
- It is the boast of every juju priest that unless he dies, no thief can ever come to steal his juju away.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- Leopards lurk in dark corners.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- One must have to wait till the evening of one's life time to know what gratitude to pay to one's guardian spirit.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- Talks that are considered to be important must be made to drag on for so long as to make even the deaf begin to hear it.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- The gods only hear one wish at a time, and nothing more.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- The tree that cannot shed its old leaves in the dry season, cannot survive the period of drought.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- We are what our thinking makes us.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- When a ripe fruit sees an honest man, it drops.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- When the teeth fall off, the nose is sure to collapse.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- A child's face is his mirror.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- A laughing jackal portends a witch in the rafters.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- A pad that breaks a pot of water does not remain on the head.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- A woman who is not successful in her own marriage has no advice to give to her younger generations.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- Charms do not perform miracles on the shelf; they perform for those who are brave.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- He who does not look ahead always remains behind.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- If hunger forces a farmer in a particular year to eat both his yam tubers and the seed-yams, the succeeding years would still be worse because he would have no yams to eat and none to plant.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- It is a pot of water that is already half full that the world would like to help in filling to the brim.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- It is the brutally outspoken man that earns enmity.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- Let's fight, let's fight, no one knows whom fighting would favor.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- One must row in whichever boat one finds one's self.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- The alcohol that is insufficient for a whole town ought not to intoxicate one man.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- The habit of thinking is the habit of gaining strength.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- The truth passes through fire and does not burn.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- We can not choose who our relatives should be, even though we may come to like some better than others.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- When a sickle is drawn, it in turn draws the tree to which it is hooked.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- When will the goat be strong enough to kill a leopard.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- A clay pot of water is never hot-tempered.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- A lizard that fell from the top of a tree wastes its time looking back to where it fell from; if there was anything good the lizard deserved, it could not have missed it while it was there on top of the tree.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- A performing masquerade who tries too hard to outclass his colleagues may expose his anus.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- All lizards lie on their bellies, but nobody knows which of them suffers stomach ache.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- Common proverbs of cooperation are:.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- He who is called a man must behave like a man.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- If men were now to turn their hostility towards the cat, it would not be long before the domestic cat becomes a wild animal.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- It is an irresponsible adult that creates enmity because of a disagreement that arises between two children.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- It is the fear of what tomorrow may bring that makes the tortoise to carry his house along with him wherever he goes.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- Look for a black goat while it is still daytime.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- Our elders quote the cock as saying that "it would not be good if one becomes the only person in the world, and that is why they crow every morning to show their number".
(Nigerian Proverb)
- The bird that remembers its flockmates, never missed the way.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- The head could not have got to where it is now if it did not give.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- The weak warrior wearing sandals overcomes the brave with a thorn in his foot.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- We do not use our bare feet to search for hidden thorns which we have seen in day time.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- When a soup is unpalatable, and the paste of the pounded yam that goes with it is not smooth, that is the time to know a man who loves to eat pounded yam.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- When you are eating with the devil, you must use a long spoon.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- A crowd is like a smoldering log which can spark into a flame at any time.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- A lounging lizard catches no crickets.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- A person on whose head lice are being removed, must be grateful.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- An ant-hill that is destined to become a giant ant-hill will definitely become one, no matter how many times it is destroyed by elephants.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- Courage is the father of success.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- He who is courteous is not a fool.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- If neither animal nor vegetable you be, then mineral you are. If one finger brought oil it soiled others.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- It is an unthinking man who achieves prosperity, and then finds with time, that his body can no longer pass through the door.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- It is the fortunate person that the physician undertakes to help.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- Love is better than a whip.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- Our elders say that at sunset, it is one's cloth that one goes to remove from the village square.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- The bottom of wealth is sometimes a dirty thing to behold.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- The heap of yams you will reap depends upon the number of mounds you have plowed.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- There is no elephant that complains about the weight of its trunk. No elephant is burdened by the weight of its tusks.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- We live by hope, but a reed never becomes an Iroko tree by dreaming.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- When a woman cannot have good palm-nuts to give her rich oil, she still has to maintain decency in order to remain one of those that sell good quality oil.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- Who says the oasis in the desert is happy because of its hidden spring of water?
(Nigerian Proverb)
- A diviner cannot accurately divine his own future.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- A man can not sit down alone to plan for prosperity.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- A person who does not bathe, must know it of himself that he is dirty.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- An oil lamp feels proud to give light even though it wears itself away.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- Criticism is easy but it does not create.
(Nigerian Proverb)
- He who pursues an innocent chicken always stumbles.
(Nigerian Proverb)
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