Myanmar Proverbs (50)

Traditional proverbs of Myanmar in Khmer and English — each with its meaning and source.

ကံယုံ၍ ဆူးပုံမနင်းရာ

“Don't jump into a pit of thorns out of blind faith.”

Avoid taking action without proper reasoning, even when you feel confident.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

မိုးရွာတုန်း ရေခံ

“Collect rainwater while it rains.”

Seize an opportunity fully while it is available, because it will not last.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

ကြာကြာဝါးမှ ခါးမှန်းသိ

“The bitter taste is only known after chewing for a long time.”

A person's true character only becomes clear after spending real time with them.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

ကြိုးစားက ဘုရားဖြစ်

“Strive, and you can become a Buddha.”

With enough effort and determination, even the highest goal is achievable.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

ငါးခုံးမတစ်ကောင်ကြောင့် တစ်လှေလုံးပုပ်

“One rotten fish spoils the smell of the whole boat.”

The bad conduct of a single person can taint the reputation of an entire group.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

မမှားသော ရှေ့နေ၊ မသေသော ဆေးသမား

“A lawyer who never loses a case, or a doctor who never loses a patient, does not exist.”

Everyone fails sometimes, no matter how skilled or experienced they are.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

ခလုတ်ထိမှ အမိတ

“Only after stumbling and falling does a child call for its mother.”

People often ignore good advice until trouble forces them to seek help.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

ခြောက်တိုင်းလည်း မကြောက်နှင့်၊ မြှောက်တိုင်းလည်းမမြှောက်နှင့်

“Do not fear every threat, and do not be swayed by every compliment.”

Keep a level head — do not let intimidation or flattery control your judgment.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

တစ်ခါသေဖူး ပျဉ်ဖိုးနားလည်

“Only after a death does one learn the price of a coffin.”

Real understanding often comes only through direct, sometimes painful, experience.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

မသိသူကျော်သွား၊ သိသူဖော်စား

“The ignorant walk right past the pot of gold; the knowledgeable recognize it.”

Without knowledge, even great opportunities go unnoticed.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

တစ်ချက်ခုတ် နှစ်ချက်ပြတ်

“One stroke of the blade, two things are cut.”

Act efficiently so that a single effort accomplishes more than one goal.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

ဘူးဆိုလျှင် ဖရုံမသီး

“A bottle-gourd vine will never bear a pumpkin.”

A person's fundamental nature does not change, no matter the circumstances.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

ဘယ်သူမပြု မိမိမှု

“We are each the heir of our own actions.”

Every person must live with the consequences of what they themselves have done.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

မျက်ကန်း တစ္ဆေမကြောက်

“A blind man is not afraid of a ghost.”

Those unaware of a danger feel no fear of it, for better or worse.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

မရှိတာထက် မသိတာ ခက်

“Not knowing is harder than not having.”

A lack of knowledge is a greater hardship than a lack of possessions.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

မီးလောင်ရာ လေပင့်

“The wind blows toward wherever there is fire.”

Outside interference tends to make an existing trouble even worse.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

သည်ပုတ်ထဲက သည်ပဲ

“Beans from the same pot ferment alike.”

Children tend to take after the character and habits of their parents.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

အိပ်ချင်ယောင်ဆောင်သူ အနှိုးရခက်

“It is hard to wake someone who is only pretending to be asleep.”

A person who deliberately ignores the truth cannot easily be made to face it.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

ကြီးသူကို ရိုသေ၊ ရွယ်တူကို လေးစား၊ ငယ်သူကို သနား

“Revere your elders, respect those your own age, and be kind to the young.”

A guiding rule for treating every generation with the appropriate respect and care.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

ကုသိုလ်လည်းရ ဝမ်းလည်းဝ

“Earn merit and fill your stomach at the same time.”

Good work should ideally serve both a moral purpose and a practical need.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

ချစ်စကိုရှည်စေ၊ မုန်းစကိုတိုစေ

“Let love last long, and let hatred be short.”

Nurture affection so it endures, but let resentment fade quickly.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

ကလေးရှက်တော့ငို၊ လူကြီးရှက်တော့ရယ်

“When ashamed, a child cries, but an adult laughs.”

The way a person handles embarrassment changes as they mature.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

ကျွန်းကိုင်းမှီ ကိုင်းကျွန်းမှီ

“The island depends on the reeds, and the reeds depend on the island.”

People and things that live side by side rely on one another to endure.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

အပွေးမြင် အပင်သိ၊ အသွေးမြင် အသွင်သိ

“You know a tree by its bark, and a person by their character.”

Outward conduct reveals a person's true inner nature.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

ချွေတာစုဆောင်း သူဌေးလောင်း

“Save carefully and live modestly, and you will become wealthy.”

Consistent frugality and thrift are the real path to prosperity.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

ဆင်ပိန် ကျွဲလောက်

“Even a thin elephant is still as big as a buffalo.”

A person of real substance remains greater than others even in reduced circumstances.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

သန်းခေါင်ထက် ညဉ့်မနက်

“The night can never grow darker than midnight.”

Once a situation has hit its very worst point, it can only improve from there.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

တိတ်တိတ်နေ ထောင်တန်

“Silence is worth a thousand words.”

Restraint and quiet composure can carry more weight than speech.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

ရောင့်ရဲတင်းတိမ် လူ့စည်းစိမ်

“Contentment is the true luxury of life.”

Being satisfied with what one has brings greater happiness than material abundance.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

ပညာလို အိုသည်မရှိ

“No one is ever too old to gain new knowledge.”

Learning has no age limit and should continue throughout one's whole life.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

နွားကွဲ ကျားကိုက်

“Cattle that scatter from the herd fall prey to the tiger.”

People who separate from their group become vulnerable to danger.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

ပညာ သမာ အာဘာ နတ္ထိ

“There is no light as bright as knowledge.”

Knowledge illuminates a person's path like nothing else can.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

ဘုရားမှတ်လို့ ကိုးကွယ်ပါ၊ ဖွတ်ထွက်မှ တောင်ပို့မှန်းသိ

“It was worshipped as a pagoda mound, until a lizard crawled out of it.”

A false impression is honored until the truth is finally revealed.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

စကားနည်း ရန်စဲ

“Fewer words bring fewer enemies.”

Speaking carefully and sparingly helps a person avoid unnecessary conflict.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

မြွေမသေ တုတ်မကျို

“Let the snake live, and keep the stick unbroken.”

Seek a resolution in which neither side is destroyed and both make concessions.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

လူမိုက်နှင့်ငွေ အတူမနေ

“A foolish person and money never stay together for long.”

Wealth quickly slips away from those who lack the wisdom to manage it.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

သတိမမူ ဂူမမြင်၊ သတိမူက မြူကိုမြင်

“The careless miss even a great cave, but the watchful notice even fine mist.”

Mindfulness reveals details and opportunities that carelessness overlooks entirely.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

သွားဖန်များ ခရီးရောက်

“Make the journey many times, and you will surely arrive.”

Persistence and repeated effort will eventually lead to reaching one's goal.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

အလကားရသည့်နွား သွားဖြဲကြည့်

“Do not check the teeth of a cow that was given to you for free.”

Accept a genuine gift graciously, rather than picking it apart for flaws.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

အလိုကြီးက အရနည်း

“A greedy person ends up gaining the least.”

Excessive greed often causes a person to lose out rather than gain.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

ဥစ္စာဟူသည် မျက်လှည့်မျိုး၊ ပညာဟူသည် မြတ်ရွှေအိုး

“Possessions are an illusion, but knowledge is a pot of pure gold.”

Material wealth is fleeting, but knowledge is a lasting and precious treasure.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

ကြက်ကန်း ဆန်အိုးတိုး

“Like a blind chicken that stumbles into a pot of rice.”

Describes a stroke of pure luck that arrives without any real effort or skill.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

ကျွဲပါးစောင်းတီ

“Like playing a harp for a buffalo.”

Refined effort is wasted on someone unable to appreciate it.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

ပွဲပြီး မီးသေ

“The fire went out the moment the show ended.”

Enthusiasm and energy for something fade quickly once the excitement passes.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

မီးခဲပြာဖုံး

“Red-hot charcoal covered over with ash.”

A capable person's talent is hidden by circumstance, though the potential still burns beneath the surface.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

“If a needle can pierce it, do not chop it with an axe.”

Use a method that fits the size of the problem — do not overreact to a small matter.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

“The desire to laugh is stronger than the desire to weep.”

People are naturally drawn toward joy and resilience, even after hardship.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

“Guests only come to a happy house.”

A welcoming, joyful home naturally draws visitors and company.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

“In time of test, family is best.”

When difficulties strike, one's own family provides the truest support.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition

“Only with a new ruler do you learn the value of the old one.”

People often fail to appreciate what they had until it is replaced by something worse.

Traditional Myanmar Wisdom

Source: Traditional Myanmar proverb, public-domain oral tradition