Like a popular Igbo proverb says: ‘Proverbs are the palm oil with which we eat words.’ Proverbs are quite beautiful and especially among the tribes of Nigeria they are used frequently in daily speech.
Here are some of the deepest Yoruba proverbs you will ever see:
1. A stammerer will eventually say father.
2. As there is guilt in innocence, there is innocence in guilt.
3. After we fry the fat, we see what is left.
4. A man with a cough cannot conceal himself.
5. Fear a silent man. He has lips like a drum.
6. If something that was going to chop off your head only knocked off your cap, you should be grateful.
7. If you don’t sell your head, no one will buy it.
8. One takes care of one’s own: when a bachelor roasts yam, he shares it with his sheep.
9. Silence is an attribute of the dead; he who is alive speaks.
10. The man who has bread to eat does not appreciate the severity of a famine.
11. We must blame the thief first before we say that where the owner put her property was improper.
12. When hunger gets inside you, nothing else can.
13. When the door is closed, you must learn to slide across the crack of the sill.
14. Where you will sit when you are old shows where you stood in youth.
15. You cannot shave a man’s head in his absence.16. You do not beat a child on the day he breaks a pot.

Naij.com