Better be alone than in bad company.
Meaning: Solitude preserves your integrity better than compromising yourself through associations with those who corrupt or harm you.
Origin: Recorded in A Dictionary of English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, an undated collection published in London by Whittaker & Co. around 1880 and credited to Thomas Preston. Its earlier history hasn't been traced.
Equivalents in French, Spanish, Japanese, and German
- French: Mieux vaut être seul que mal accompagné (literally: Better to be alone than badly accompanied)
- Spanish: Mas vale solo que mal acompañado (literally: Better be alone than in bad company)
- Japanese: 朱に交われば赤くなる (Shu ni majiwareba akaku naru) (literally: If you mix with vermilion, you turn red)
- German: Besser allein als in schlechter Gesellschaft (literally: Better alone than in bad company)
More proverbs about Morality
- He that cannot abide a bad market deserves not a good one. — Profiting from favorable conditions requires enduring the inevitable downturns with patie…
- Make the best of a bad bargain. — When stuck with an unfavorable deal, focus energy on maximizing what value remains rather…
- Barley straw's good fodder when the cow gives water. — When resources are scarce, even poor substitutes become valuable for survival.
- Better to be beaten than be in bad company. — Physical hardship endures briefly; corrupting influences from vice seep into character pe…
- Brag's a good dog, but Holdfast is a better. — Boasting accomplishes nothing; actually keeping what you have through persistence and rel…
- Brag's a good dog, but that he hath lost his tail. — Boasting loses you the respect that makes bragging worthwhile in the first place.
From our tongue twisters
- 앞 집 팥죽은 붉은 팥 풋팥죽이고, 뒷집 콩죽은 햇콩 단콩 콩죽이다. (Ap jip patjugeun bulgeun pat put-patjugigo, dwitjip kongjugeun haetkong dankong kongjugida.) — Stacks Korean's aspirated p and k against the final consonants, so every word ends where…
- 저 분은 백 법학박사이고 이 분은 박 법학박사이다. (Jeo buneun Baek beopakbaksa igo, i buneun Bak beopakbaksa ida.) — Baek and Bak are a single vowel apart, and 법학박사 piles four stop consonants into one title.
- Król Karol kupił królowej Karolinie korale koloru koralowego. — Every word starts with k, and król/Karol/korale/koloru keep re-ordering the same handful…