English in everyday life
Proverbs
Explore English sayings from most to least frequent in a published American English corpus. Alternate forms are collected together.
About these frequency groups
Groups use full-form occurrence counts in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), recorded in 2016–2017. For a proverb with several forms, we use the highest individual count, since adding overlapping forms could count the same occurrence twice.
These are historical American English corpus counts, not estimates of how often everyone uses a saying today. A zero means no full-form match was recorded. The source’s separate familiarity ratings are retained in the data but do not determine this ordering.
We grouped variants, merged reviewed duplicate entries, and preserved existing editorial wording. The source includes historical and dated sayings; inclusion is not an endorsement.
Expressions containing make, including its inflections. Clear word filter
104 entries
Common
10–99 recorded occurrences
practice makes perfect
repeated practice leads to mastery
Might makes right
Two wrongs don't make a right
good fences make good neighbours
Clear boundaries between people keep their relationship peaceful.
What a difference a day makes
Make love, not war
Absence makes the heart grow fonder
Clothes make the man
Fake it till you make it
Haste makes waste
Rome wasn't built in a day
Matching variant: Rome was not made in a day
Boots are made for walking
Politics makes strange bedfellows
He who has the gold makes the rules
Records are made to be broken
make hay while the sun shines
to take advantage of favourable conditions while they last
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
Love makes the world go round
Rules are made to be broken
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink
Making a way out of no way
Matching variant: God can make a way out of no way
Don't make the same mistake twice
Life is what you make it
Make haste slowly
Hard cases make bad law
Many hands make light work
Money makes the world go round
You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear
Only God can make a tree
Right makes might
They don't make them like they used to
You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs
You never get a second chance to make a first impression
Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door
Matching variant: Make a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door