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 know, including its inflections. Clear word filter
37 entries
Most common
100 or more recorded occurrences
Common
10–99 recorded occurrences
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
Everything you know is wrong
Better the devil you know than the one you don't
If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there
If you have to ask, you won't understand
Matching variant: If you have to ask, you'll never know
Life is like a box of chocolates
Matching variant: Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you're gonna get
The wife is always the last to know
You know me, Al
You can't know where you're going unless you know where you've been
You never know what you can do until you try
Beauty knows no pain
If you don't know what it is, don't mess with it
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts
To know all is to forgive all
You have to know when to hold them and know when to fold them
Not observed in this corpus
No full-form matches recorded; this does not mean the proverb is never used
Come live with me and you'll know me
Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up
Don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing
Game recognizes game
Matching variant: Game knows game