African Proverbs about Love and Marriage

• 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)
• One doesn’t love another, if one doesn’t accept anything from her. (Chad, Niger, Nigeria)
• Love doesn’t listen to rumors. (Ghana)
• 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)
• People who love one another do not dwell on each other’s mistakes. (Kenya)
• To be smiled at isn’t to be loved. (Kenya)
• The house of a person we love is never far. (Kenya)
• 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)
• The one who loves an unsightly person is the one who makes him beautiful. (Uganda)
• 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)
• 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)
• 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)
• 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)

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