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Gypsy proverbs



Sayings of Gypsy origin

He who willingly gives you a finger will also give you the whole hand.

The dog that trots about finds a bone.

Burn your enemies caravan and you burn you future.

Bad people don’t sing.

The stick that breaks the window does not kill a dog.

As the crow is made for stewing the dog is made for kicking.

Go in God’s name–so you ride no witches.

When you are given, eat, when you are beaten, run away.

A lonely old crow, see someone you know
Fly to your right, sure to be right
And if you are hawking, money before night.

There are such things as false truths and honest lies.

It is better to be the head of a mouse than the tail of a lion.

Everybody sees only his own dish.

In the village without dogs the farmers walk without sticks.

The gypsy church was made of pork and the dogs ate it.

Beauty cannot be eaten with a spoon.

You cannot stop a whore, not even with a hundred horses.

You don’t kill a gypsy by cutting him in ten pieces — you only make ten more gypsies.

Gypsy gold does not chink and glitter, it gleams in the sun and neighs in the dark.

He who is late may gnaw the bones.

The world is a ladder, in which some go up and others go down.

The winter will ask what we did all summer.

Where the scythe cuts and the sock rives, no more fairies and bee-hives.

After bad luck comes good fortune.

Children will tell you what they do, men what they think and older people what they have seen and heard.

When your drunk the old woman tastes like a virgin..

Credit is better than money.

If you stab out the eye of thy neighbor cut off two finger and dip them in honey. Cook them in lemon curd and present them to his family in a pigeon pie. If they dine on a full moon his eye will sprout again from it’s socket.

Bury me on my feet, I have spent my entire life on my knees.

Without wood the fire would die.

A tear in the eye is a wound in the heart.

When the sea turned to honey, the poor man lost his spoon.

It is easier to milk a cow that stands still.

They that burn you for a witch lose all their coals.

In the hour of your greatest success are sown the seeds of your own destruction.

May you have a lawsuit in which you know you are in the right.

He that has a white horse and a fair wife need never want for trouble.

The patient thief is as a tree whose root runs deep as he waits for the sweet fruit..

Where rich people can make honest money, poor people have to steal.

The buyer needs a hundred eyes, the horse thief not one.

The fat woman gives the sweetest ride.

I have two masters — God and the devil; I work for the devil until lunch then I follow the Lord.

A hairy man’s a geary man, but a hairy wife’s a witch.

You have to dig deep to bury your daddy.

Good horses can’t be of a bad color.

Happiness you pay for is to be found everywhere.

A man must put grain in the ground before he can cut the harvest.

The dog that digs deepest finds the bones.

When do we have a day of fast? When there is no bread and ham in the larder.

A witch-wife and an evil is three-halfpence worse than the devil.

You can count the apples on a tree but you can’t count the trees from one apple.

A gypsy only tells the truth once in his life but he regrets it afterwards.

If a man looks upon your wife pluck out his eye and cook it in a goodly stew. If he eats the stew his manhood will wither and fall off in the next moon.

We are all wanderers on this earth. Our hearts are full of wonder, and our souls are deep with dreams.

Stay where there are songs.

Gypsy is a name for the Romani people, an ethnic group of South Asian origin spread throughout Europe and northern Africa. They can be divided into many groups distinguished by language or dialect, culture, and way of life.