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 only, including its inflections. Clear word filter
47 entries
Not observed in this corpus
No full-form matches recorded; this does not mean the proverb is never used
There are no bad dogs, only bad owners
There are no dull subjects; there are only dull writers
There are no problems, only opportunities
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail
Matching variant: If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail
When you're at the bottom, the only way to go is up
Yesterday is gone; tomorrow has not yet come; we have only today
You are only young once
You can never do merely one thing
Matching variant: You can never do only one thing