Tis easy to build castles in the air.
Meaning: Imagination costs nothing, but translating dreams into reality requires effort and resources.
Origin: The older image was "castles in Spain," from the 13th-century French Roman de la Rose, for daydreams of things one would never own. "Castles in the air" replaced it in English in the late 16th century. Henry David Thoreau gave it a hopeful turn in Walden (1854): if you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost — "that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."
Equivalents in French, Spanish, Japanese, and German
- French: Faire des châteaux en Espagne (literally: To build castles in the air)
- Spanish: Hacer castillos en el aire (literally: To build castles in the air)
- Japanese: 絵に描いた餅 (E ni kaita mochi) (literally: A rice cake painted in a picture)
- German: Luftschlösser bauen (literally: To build air-castles)
More proverbs about Wisdom
- Rolling in cash he can't use, like a cat in a corn-bin. — Abundance becomes worthless when it's fundamentally unsuited to one's nature or needs.
- The cat is hungry when a crust contents her. — Extreme hunger makes even the poorest sustenance—a mere crust—seem like a satisfying meal.
- The cat sees not the mouse ever. — A predator blinded by complacency allows its prey to escape unnoticed.
- When the cat winketh, little wots the mouse what the cat thinketh. — A predator's benign appearance masks hidden intentions; never trust surface calm from tho…
- Though the cat winks awhile, yet sure she is not blind. — Temporary inattention doesn't indicate genuine inability; the cat merely feigns sleep whi…
- Those are wise who learn caution from their own experience; but those are wiser who learn it from the experience of others. — Benefiting from others' mistakes costs less than accumulating your own painful lessons.
From our tongue twisters
- O rato roeu a roupa do rei de Roma; a rainha com raiva roeu o resto. — An unstoppable 'r' trill drill — every key word begins or ends with the Portuguese r.
- Um tigre, dois tigres, três tigres tristes triscam trigo num trigal. — A 'tr' cluster drill that adds a sad adjective to make the alliteration worse.
- O papa papava o papo do pipo; o pipo papava o papo do papa. — A perfectly palindromic 'p' construction that reverses meaning when you swap the nouns.