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 anything, including its inflections. Clear word filter
26 entries
Most common
100 or more recorded occurrences
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
If anything can go wrong, it will
Anything is better than nothing
You can have too much of a good thing
Matching variant: You can have too much of anything
Anything can happen and usually does
Anything worth doing is worth doing well
Anything worth doing is worth overdoing
Don't start something you can't finish
Matching variant: Don't start anything you can't finish
It costs nothing to look
Matching variant: It doesn't cost anything to look
You can do anything you put your mind to
Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it
It costs nothing to ask
Matching variant: It doesn't cost anything to ask
Anything boys can do girls can do better
Can't never could do anything
If you can't say something nice, don't say anything
If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything
Sorry doesn't help
Matching variant: Sorry doesn't change anything
Not observed in this corpus
No full-form matches recorded; this does not mean the proverb is never used
Anything for a quiet life
Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening
Anything worth fighting for is worth fighting dirty for
Can't never did anything
If you don't make mistakes, you don't make anything
It costs nothing to dream
Matching variant: Dreaming doesn't cost anything
You can prove anything with statistics
You get out of life what you put into it
Matching variant: You get out of anything what you put into it