African Proverbs About Age

Every saying in the archive filed under age: 10 proverbs, 3 quotes. 1 of them carry a written explanation of what it means; the rest are being added over time.

They come from Nigeria (4), South Africa (2), Mali (1) and Ghana (1). 5 have no recorded country and are shown simply as African proverbs — the archive does not guess at an origin it cannot support.

Named writers and speakers on this subject include Chinua Achebe (2) and Johann Rupert (1).

A few from this collection:

• What the old man sees sitting down, the young man cannot see standing on a tree.
• Everybody has been young before, but not everybody has been old before.
• When you are older, you keep warm with the wood you gathered in your youth.

Sayings here often sit under other subjects too — most often Wisdom and Knowledge.

Or see every subject in the archive.