Love and Marriage Proverbs

Please enjoy these proverbs related to love and marriage.

• Love is best expressed with deeds, and not mere words. (- Kiswahili)
• If money/wealth was to be found on trees, many people wouldn’t mind marrying monkeys. (- Africa)
• Falling in love is easy, staying in love is the hustle. (- Africa)
• Ugly people must either learn to dance or make love. (- Zimbabwe)
• Falling in love is easy, staying in love is the hustle. (- Africa)
• Wood already touched by fire isn’t hard to set alight. (- Africa)
• Dogs don’t love people, they love the place where they are fed. (- Burundi)
• Where there is love there is no darkness. (- Burundi)
• It is better to be loved than feared. (- Sierra Leone)
• The way to the beloved isn’t thorny. (- Cameroon- Duala)
• One doesn’t love another, if one doesn’t accept anything from her. (- Chad, Niger, Nigeria- Kanuri/Bornu)
• Love doesn’t listen to rumors. (- Ghana– Akan)
• Love is like a baby: it needs to be treated tenderly. (- Congo)
• If a woman doesn’t love you, she calls you brother. (- Ivory Coast– Baule)
• Love put the eaglet out of its nest. (- Kenya– Gikuyu)
• People who love one another do not dwell on each other’s mistakes. (- Kenya- Gikuyu)
• To be smiled at isn’t to be loved. (- Kenya- Gikuyu)
• The house of a person we love is never far. (- Kenya- Gikuyu)
• A letter from the heart can be read on the face. (- Kiswahili)
• Love has to be shown by deeds not words. (- Kiswahili)
• Love doesn’t rely on physical features. (- Lesotho)
• He who loves you, loves you with your dirt. (- Uganda- Ganda)
• The one who loves an unsightly person is the one who makes him beautiful. (- Uganda- Ganda)
• To love someone who does not love you, is like shaking a tree to make the dew drops fall. (- Congo)
• He who doesn’t like chattering women must stay a bachelor. (- Congo)
• A young wife tends to cook too much at first. (- Ethiopia)
• Bread without sauce and a home without a wife are meaningless. (- Ethiopia)
• The way you got married isn’t the way you’ll get divorced. (- Haiti)
• A bird can be guarded, a wife can’t. (- Kiswahili)
• A man without a wife is like a vase without flowers. (- Africa)
• It is the habit that a child forms at home, that follows them to their marriage. (- Nigeria)
• If you marry a monkey for his wealth, the money goes and the monkey remains as is. (- Egypt)
• Having beauty doesn’t mean understanding the perseverance of marriage. (- Africa)
• If you do not travel, you will marry your own sister. (- Mozambique)
• A man that does not lie shall never marry. (- Zimbabwe)
• One who plants grapes by the road side, and one who marries a pretty woman, share the same problem. (- Ethiopia)
• Marriage is like a groundnut: you have to crack them to see what is inside. (- Ghana- Akan)
• The buttocks are like a married couple though there is constant friction between them; they will still love and live together. (- Africa)
• If there were no cold Friday evenings and boring Saturdays, no one would get married any more. (- Morocco)
• How gently glides the married life away, when she who rules still seems but to obey. (- Kenya)
• He who marries a beauty marries trouble. (- Nigeria)
• A woman who has not been twice married cannot know what a perfect marriage is. (- Nigeria)
• A good wife is easy to find, but suitable in-laws are rare. (- Malagasy)
• It is better to be married to an old lady than to remain unmarried. (- Uganda)
• A woman who is not successful in her own marriage has no advice to give to her younger generations. (- Nigeria)
• A married couple is neither enemies nor friends. (- Somalia)
• If money where to be found up in the trees, most people would be married to monkeys. (- Africa)
• The man may be the head of the home but the wife is the heart. (- Kenya- Gikuyu)
• If there is cause to hate someone, the cause to love has just begun. (- Wolof)
• The man that won’t marry a woman with other admirers won’t marry a woman at all. (- Nigeria)
• The robin and the wren are God’s cock and hen; the martin and the swallow are God’s mate and marrow. (- Tanzania)
• He was entrapped by the evening, it has cost him his marriage. (- Bantu)
• Talking with one another is loving one another. (- Kenya)
• One who loves you, warns you. (- Uganda- Baganda)
• Leave her now and then if you would really love your wife. (- Malawi)
• The most dangerous thing a man needs is a woman. (- Somalia)
• When one is in love, a cliff becomes a meadow. (- Ethiopia)
• Marriage is not a tight knot, but a slip knot. (- Malagasy)
• Marriage is a snake to slip into your handbag. (- Africa)

  For more African proverbs on love and marriage (and many other life topics) please see Lifelines: The African Book of Proverbs.

3 people like this post.

Like

Unlike