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 come, including its inflections. Clear word filter
49 entries
Most common
100 or more recorded occurrences
Common
10–99 recorded occurrences
what goes around comes around
good or bad actions return to their author
First come, first served
The best is yet to come
If you build it, they will come
Easy come, easy go
The worst is yet to come
All good things must come to an end
What goes up must come down
The best things in life are free
Matching variant: The best things in life come free
You never know what will happen
Matching variant: You never know what comes next
Don't forget where you came from
The sun will come out tomorrow
Nothing comes easy
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
Good things come in small packages
Be careful what you wish for; you might get it
Matching variant: Be careful what you wish for; it may come true
The bigger they are, the harder they fall
Matching variant: The bigger they come, the harder they fall
Christmas comes but once a year
Nothing comes from nothing
What if they gave a war and nobody came?
Chickens come home to roost
Crisis is opportunity
Matching variant: With crisis comes opportunity
All things come to those who wait
Everything must come to an end
I came, I saw, I conquered
Out of evil comes good
Wisdom comes with age
A bad penny always comes back
Life comes at you fast
Misfortunes never come singly
Progress comes in small steps
The only place where success comes before work is in a dictionary
Not observed in this corpus
No full-form matches recorded; this does not mean the proverb is never used