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 good, including its inflections. Clear word filter
102 entries
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
A change is as good as a rest
A merry heart does good like a medicine
A miss is as good as a mile
A walk is as good as a hit
All the good ones are taken
Anger is never without reason but seldom with a good one
Any day above ground is a good day
Close is not good enough
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good
Eavesdroppers never hear any good of themselves
Get while the getting is good
Go while the going is good
Good taste is good taste
It is better to look good than to feel good
Necessity never made a good bargain
Not all press is good press
Trying is not enough
Matching variant: Trying is not good enough
When you're good, you're good
Not observed in this corpus
No full-form matches recorded; this does not mean the proverb is never used
A bad dress rehearsal means a good performance
A book is a friend
Matching variant: A good book is the best of friends