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 die, including its inflections. Clear word filter
25 entries
Common
10–99 recorded occurrences
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
Only the good die young
Old soldiers never die
You're never too old to learn
Matching variant: Never too old to die
Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse
The one who dies with the most toys wins
Theirs not to reason why; theirs but to do and die
It's better to die on your feet than to live on your knees
Root, hog, or die
When good Americans die they go to Paris
Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die
He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword
Life sucks, and then you die
We all die alone
You'll get pie in the sky when you die
Not observed in this corpus
No full-form matches recorded; this does not mean the proverb is never used
Eat right, stay fit, die anyway
He who dies with the most toys still dies
Life is a bitch, and then you die
Old soldiers never die; young ones do
Shit happens, and then you die
There is a time to live and a time to die
You can't kill shit
Matching variant: Shit never dies