You attract more flies with honey than vinegar
Meaning: Kindness and pleasantness persuade people more effectively than hostility or harshness.
Origin: Kindness persuades better than harshness. Giovanni Torriano's collection of Italian proverbs (1666) has "Honey gets more flies to it than doth vinegar," and Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack (1744) says that a spoonful of honey will catch more flies than a gallon of vinegar.
More proverbs about Morality
- Good ale is meat, drink, and cloth. — A hearty drink can seem to nourish, refresh, and warm you all at once.
- Steal the goose, and give the giblets in alms. — Token charity from what you stole does nothing to redeem the theft.
- Anger is short-lived in a good man. — A good person's anger passes quickly and leaves no lasting grudge.
- Where bad's the best, naught must be the choice. — When all options are flawed, refusing to participate entirely becomes the wisest decision.
- Better be alone than in bad company. — Solitude preserves your integrity better than compromising yourself through associations…
- He that cannot abide a bad market deserves not a good one. — Profiting from favorable conditions requires enduring the inevitable downturns with patie…
From our false friends
- Sensible — Actually means 'sensitive'. For sensible/level-headed, say raisonnable.
- Librairie — Actually means 'bookshop'. A library is une bibliothèque.
- Constipado — Actually means 'having a head cold'. Estoy constipado = I have a cold.