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 thing, including its inflections. Clear word filter
78 entries
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
There is no such thing as a definitive
There's no such thing as luck
All things come to those who wait
Hope is a dangerous thing
If it isn't one thing, it's another
Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry all easy
Some things you can't change
There is no such thing as a free ride
There's no such thing as ghosts
There's no such thing as perfection
God gives all things to industry
Life is just one damn thing after another
The best things in life aren't things
There is no right way to do a wrong thing
There is no such thing as a bad child
There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing
There is no such word as can't
Matching variant: There's no such thing as can't
There's no such thing as a perfect man
There's no such thing as impossible
Things are not what they used to be
Not observed in this corpus
No full-form matches recorded; this does not mean the proverb is never used
All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal or fattening
Each man kills the thing he loves
Everything takes longer than it should
Matching variant: Things always take longer than you think
Good things come in pairs
If you want something done right, do it yourself
Matching variant: If you want a thing done well, do it yourself