Nigerian Proverbs and Sayings
142 Nigerian sayings collected from Nigeria — 61 proverbs, 77 quotes, 4 short stories. Including Igbo proverbs.
- If the hare has outwitted the hunters today, tomorrow is still a hunting day.Proverb · Nigeria
- He who burns down his house knows why ashes cost a fortune.Proverb · Nigeria
- He who marries a beauty marries trouble.Proverb · Nigeria
- Sometimes we hold on to the good and the better for a very long time that we don't even know when we allowed the best to slip away from our hands.Quote · Nigeria
- If men were now to turn their hostility towards the cat, it would not be long before the domestic cat becomes a wild animal.Proverb · Nigeria
- However much the buttocks are in a hurry, they will always remain at the back.Proverb · Nigeria
- Human life has meaning only to that degree and as long as it is lived in the service of humanity.Quote · Nigeria
- I don't care about age very much. I think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, and they always seemed larger than life.Quote · Nigeria
- When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.Quote · Nigeria
- If a monkey is amongst dogs, why won't it start barking?.Proverb · Nigeria
- If a blind man says lets throw stones, be assured that he has stepped on one.Proverb · Nigeria
- If crocodiles eat their own eggs what would they do to the flesh of a frog.Proverb · Nigeria
- If I had not grown up in Nigeria- and if all I knew of Africa were of popular images- I too would think that africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals and incomprehensible people fighting sensless wars, dying of poverty and aids- unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind white foreigner.Quote · Nigeria
- If you don't wish to have rags for clothes, don't play with a dog.Proverb · Nigeria
- Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it's far removed from your situation. This is what I try to tell my students: this is one great thing that literature can do - it can make us identify with situations and people far away.Quote · Nigeria
- In whatever you do, strive to be the best at it.Quote · Nigeria
- The problem with leaderless uprisings taking over is that you don't always know what you get at the other end. If you are not careful you could replace a bad government with one much worse!.Quote · Nigeria
- The Leopard, the Tortoise and the Bush RatA Nigerian short story by Elphinstone Dayrell. At the time of the great famine all the animals were very thin and weak from want of food; but there was…Short story · Nigeria
- Life is a teacher. The more you live, the more you learn.Proverb · Nigeria
- I tell my students, it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next door who looks like you. What's more difficult is to identify with someone you don't see, who's very far away, who's a different color, who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then literature is really performing its wonders.Quote · Nigeria
- Looking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there's a lot of work to be done.Quote · Nigeria
- A man does not wander far from where his corn is roasting.Proverb · Nigeria
- A man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so to save them from starving. They all have food in their own homes. When we gather together in the moonlit village ground it is not because of the moon. Every man can see it in his own compound. We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so.Quote · Nigeria
- Many people read History books but it takes just a few people to LEAD the cause that will shape the course of HISTORY.Quote · Nigeria