There is nothing certain in this life but death and taxes!
Meaning: Mortality and financial obligation are life's only inevitabilities, making all other plans provisional.
Origin: Benjamin Franklin made it famous in a 1789 letter to the French scientist Jean-Baptiste Le Roy, writing that "in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." He was repeating a joke already decades old: Christopher Bullock's play The Cobler of Preston (1716) has "'Tis impossible to be sure of any thing but Death and Taxes," and Daniel Defoe wrote of things "as certain as death and taxes" in 1726.
More proverbs about Wisdom
- I'm too old a bird to be caught by chaff. — Experience teaches you to recognize deception disguised as something worthless or trivial.
- The chamber of sickness is the chapel of devotion. — Illness strips away life's distractions, leaving only the essential human need to seek me…
- It chanceth in an hour that comes not in seven years. — Fortune can deliver in moments what patient waiting over years might never produce.
- Change of pasture makes fat calves. — New environments and fresh opportunities allow young, developing people to thrive and gro…
- The charitable give out at the door, and God puts in at the window. — Generosity creates a virtuous cycle where outward giving mysteriously returns through une…
- A cherry year, a merry year. — Abundant harvests of cherries historically signaled prosperity and good fortune for the c…
From our untranslatable words
- Backpfeifengesicht — A face that is just begging to be slapped — someone so smug you can't help the urge.
- Tartle — That panicky pause when you go to introduce someone and realize you've forgotten their na…
- Tampo — Pulling back your warmth and affection when you've been hurt — going quiet and distant, h…