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 long, including its inflections. Clear word filter
22 entries
Common
10–99 recorded occurrences
Less common
1–9 recorded occurrences
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice
The longest journey begins with a single step
A week is a long time in politics
It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice
The impossible takes a little longer
A long shot is better than no shot
Study long, study wrong
The future is not what it used to be
Matching variant: The future is no longer what it used to be
You'll be a long time dead
Not observed in this corpus
No full-form matches recorded; this does not mean the proverb is never used