Venture a small fish to catch a great one.
Meaning: Small sacrifices or risks are worthwhile investments when they lead to substantially greater rewards or success.
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
- Venture not all in one ship. — Spreading your resources across multiple ventures protects you from total loss when disas…
- Vice is nourished by being concealed. — Secrecy allows wrongdoing to grow unchecked, while exposure and accountability naturally…
- The sweetest wine makes the sharpest vinegar. — Excellence corrupted becomes more destructive than mediocrity ever could.
- The worth of a thing is best known by the want of it. — Deprivation reveals true value; we recognize importance only through loss or scarcity.
- For want of a nail the shoe is lost; for want of a shoe the horse is lost; for want of a horse the rider is lost. — Small negligences compound catastrophically; ignoring minor problems cascades into comple…
- He that is warm thinks all are so. — The comfortable forget others suffer deprivation and misjudge universal experience by the…
From our idioms
- run circles around someone — To outperform someone by a wide margin; to be better than someone.
- run its course — To follow a natural progression without interference.
- run-of-the-mill — Ordinary or usual.