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
Not observed in this corpus
No full-form matches recorded; this does not mean the proverb is never used
Good behavior is the last refuge of mediocrity
Good fortune that comes seldom, comes more welcome
Good men are scarce
Good start, bad finish
Good things come in pairs
Good wine needs no bush
Good, better, best: never let it rest until your good is better and your better is best
If you can't be good, be careful
If you can't be good, be good at it
If you can't be good, be lucky
It is better to look good than to be good
It pays to look well
Matching variant: It pays to look good
Just is good enough
Liars should have good memories
Like the curate's egg, good in parts
Listeners never hear any good of themselves
Men are only good for one thing
Never let facts stand in the way of a good story
One guess is as good as another
Rich or poor, it's good to have money
The good is the enemy of the best
The only good pig is a dead pig
There is no such thing as too much of a good thing
There is nothing so good for the inside of a man as the outside of a horse
There was never a good knife made of bad steel
There's many a good tune played on an old fiddle
What is good for General Motors is good for America
You never forget a good teacher
You never know what you have till it's gone
Matching variant: You don't know a good thing till it's gone