High places have their precipices.
Meaning: Elevated positions of power and prestige carry corresponding risks of catastrophic fall and loss.
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.
More proverbs about Wisdom
- Hope humbles more than despair. — Anticipating better futures makes us more vulnerable to disappointment than accepting cur…
- Hunger costs little; daintiness much. — Simple needs are cheaply met; refined tastes demand expensive indulgence.
- Jest not at another's infirmities. — Mocking someone's weaknesses or afflictions breeds cruelty and diminishes your own humani…
- There's no joy without alloy. — Pure pleasure is impossible; every good thing contains some mixture of difficulty or sorr…
- Joy surfeited turns to sorrow. — Excessive pleasure breeds complacency and inevitable disappointment when abundance inevit…
- As easy kiss my hand. — Dismissing something as trivially simple often blinds us to hidden difficulty or complexi…
From our tongue twisters
- Erre con erre cigarro, erre con erre barril; rápido ruedan los carros sobre los rieles del ferrocarril. — The definitive Spanish rr drill — unrelenting double-r from start to finish.
- Parangaricutirimícuaro — Not a sentence but a single word — a legendary 22-letter pronunciation challenge from a r…
- Dans ta tente ta tante t'attend. — A gentle 'ta / ten / tan / t'' warm-up that sounds faster than it reads.