As you make your bed so you must lie on it.
Meaning: Your choices about how you arrange your life will directly determine the comfort or discomfort you experience living it.
Origin: Recorded in English from about 1590, and related to a 15th-century French proverb: as one makes one's bed, so one finds it. George Herbert included it in his collection of 1640. The image is literal: whoever makes up a bed badly still has to sleep in it. It means accepting the consequences of your own choices.
Equivalents in French, Spanish, Japanese, and German
- French: Comme on fait son lit on se couche (literally: As you make your bed so you must lie on it)
- Spanish: Quien mala cama hace, en ella se yace (literally: As you make your bed so you must lie in it)
- Japanese: 自業自得 (Jigō jitoku) (literally: One's own deed, one's own profit — you get what you did)
- German: Wie man sich bettet, so liegt man (literally: As one makes one's bed, so one lies)
More proverbs about Communication
- He who lies long in bed his estate feels it. — Laziness depletes wealth as surely as an idle body consumes resources without producing i…
- You would make me believe the moon is made of green cheese. — Absurd claims require absurd evidence; gullibility has limits even when persuasion is ski…
- The best lie is the worst. — A lie that succeeds too perfectly eventually collapses under its own elaborate contradict…
- Give a dog a bone in his mouth, and you may kick him and he can't bite. — A person preoccupied with satisfying their immediate desires loses the ability to resist…
- Every man as his business lies. — Expertise and judgment develop naturally from close involvement with one's own work and r…
- It's a bad cause that none dare speak in. — Silence around a cause signals its moral weakness or indefensibility, not its strength.
From our compliments & insults
- Tu as un cœur d'or — You are genuinely kind and generous.
- Tu déchires — You're awesome — you totally rock.
- Eres un sol — You're a lovely, warm-hearted person.