Twenty-eight Yorùbá proverbs from Owomoyela's own dedicated "Truisms" section, general observations about life, chance, and human limitation that do not belong to any single theme this corpus section has assigned.
Owomoyela's own collection ends with a section he titles Part Six, "Truisms," introduced by a heading of "Miscellany," gathering proverbs that state general observations about life, the world, and human experience without fitting his own five preceding thematic parts (the good person, the fortunate person, relationships, human nature, and rights and responsibilities) . This file draws on that same dedicated section for material genuinely resistant to the sacred, place, and rare-form categories assigned across the rest of this range: proverbs about chance, hindsight, the impossibility of having everything, and the limits of foreknowledge, none of which is specific to religion, geography, or a linguistic curiosity. Twenty-eight proverbs are collected here, a representative sample of Owomoyela's own sixty-three-entry Miscellany rather than an exhaustive reproduction of it.
Literal: À bá mọ̀ had-one known, a kò ṣe é one-would-not have-done-it; a ṣé tán having-done-it ó di aápọn it-becomes a-bother.
Idiomatic: "Had one known, one would not have done it; having been done, it becomes a bother."
Meaning: Hindsight would prevent many actions, but it does not undo the consequences once they have occurred.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "If one knew what the consequences of certain actions would be, one would avoid them, but hindsight does not diminish the consequences" , cross-referenced to entry 3481 (this corpus's file 79, entry 2, on choosing one's destiny kneeling before the Creator).
Notes: Owomoyela's own cross-reference to the fate proverbs is worth preserving: the disillusionment described here on a small, everyday scale (an ordinary regretted action) mirrors the larger disillusionment described in file 79 about destiny itself, which suggests the same emotional shape, wishing one had known in advance, operates at both scales in this proverb tradition.
Source: Owomoyela 4612; compare 3481.
Literal: À bá rí kádàrá had-one seen [one's] destiny, kedere là bá rí plainly would-one see ohun tí ń ṣeni the-thing that-is-troubling-one.
Idiomatic: "Were one able to discern what lot one had chosen, plainly would one see the source of one's problems."
Meaning: Full clairvoyance about one's own destiny would remove all mystery from one's misfortune.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "Clairvoyance removes all mystery from one's misfortune"
Notes: Owomoyela's footnote states the underlying belief plainly: Yorùbá thought holds that each person chooses at creation what lot they will endure in life, but that the information is deleted from the person's memory at birth [S1, note 1]. This is a significant doctrinal statement, directly relevant to the fuller destiny material in file 79, and its placement in the miscellany rather than the fate section of Owomoyela's own arrangement shows that even his own thematic boundaries are porous.
Source: Owomoyela 4613, with note 1.
Literal: A bá ìke lọ́wọ́ ọ̀tún one-removes an-ivory-bangle from-the-right-hand, a fi bọ ọwọ́ òsì one-puts-it-onto the-left-hand; lọ́wọ́ lọ́wọ́ ni ìke wà on-a-hand on-a-hand is-where the-bangle remains.
Idiomatic: "One removes an ivory bangle from one's right wrist and slips it onto the left wrist; for all that, the bangle remains on one's wrist."
Meaning: A gesture or reshuffling of terms has not significantly altered the underlying state of affairs.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "The gesture or effort has not significantly altered the status quo ante"
Notes: A precise, self-contained image, no wider mythological or historical apparatus needed, which is characteristic of the miscellany section generally: these proverbs argue from a single vivid picture rather than from a named institution or figure.
Source: Owomoyela 4615.
Literal: A kì í dé ilé arúgbó one does-not arrive-at an-old-person's home láìfẹ́ without-a-purpose.
Idiomatic: "One does not go to an old person's home for nothing."
Meaning: Nothing in life is free; every visit, however casual it appears, has an underlying motive.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "Nothing in life is free"
Notes: The proverb's specific vehicle, a visit to an elder, gives a general economic-sounding claim ("nothing is free") a social rather than commercial frame, consistent with this whole corpus's observation that Yorùbá proverbs prefer concrete social scenes to abstract economic statements.
Source: Owomoyela 4618.
Literal: A kì í dé ilé ikú one does-not arrive-at death's home ká fẹ orí kù and lack heads; bí a ò bá tútù if-not fresh-ones, a ó bàá gbígbẹ one-will find dry-ones.
Idiomatic: "One does not get to Death's home and fail to find heads; if one does not find fresh ones, one will find dry ones."
Meaning: The sole custodian of a commodity is unlikely to experience a lack of it; Death's own domain always has skulls in stock.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "The sole custodian of a commodity is unlikely to experience a lack of it"
Notes: The grim humour of this proverb, applying ordinary market vocabulary (fresh versus dry stock) to a house of skulls, is characteristic of how directly Yorùbá proverb-speech can face death without euphemism when the point being made is really about supply and scarcity rather than about mortality itself.
Source: Owomoyela 4619.
Literal: A kì í dẹ igbó one does-not hunt in-the-bush ká pẹja and catch-fish; a kì í gbẹ́ odò one does-not drain a-river ká pa àfẹ̀ and kill a-grass-mouse.
Idiomatic: "One does not hunt in the bush and kill fish; one does not drain a river and kill a grass mouse."
Meaning: Certain occurrences would be impossible and unexpected in certain places; the setting determines what can plausibly be found there.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "Some occurrences would be impossible and unexpected in certain places"
Notes: This proverb states a general principle about category and place with unusual directness: it names two mismatched pairings (fish in a forest, a land mammal in a drained river) explicitly to make the abstract point that outcomes are constrained by their proper domain.
Source: Owomoyela 4620.
Literal: A kì í jẹ aládùn méjì pọ̀ one does-not enjoy two pleasures together.
Idiomatic: "One does not enjoy two pleasures at the same time."
Meaning: One cannot have everything at once.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "One cannot have everything at once"
Notes: This proverb belongs to the same small family as file 94's "two X cannot share one space" cluster, but its subject, simultaneous pleasures rather than rival occupants or claimants, is different enough in kind that it is catalogued here rather than folded into that more specific formula.
Source: Owomoyela 4631.
Literal: A kì í jẹ méjì lóko Ǹtọ̀fà one does-not eat two-things on-Ǹtọ̀fà's-farm; ẹní bá jẹyán kì í jẹ kọ́ whoever eats pounded-yam does-not eat corn-meal-loaf; ẹní bá jẹ iṣu kì í jẹ àmàlà whoever eats yam does-not eat yam-flour-loaf.
Idiomatic: "One does not eat two things on Ǹtọfà's farm; the person who eats pounded yams may not eat corn-meal loaf; whoever eats yams may not eat yam-flour loaf."
Meaning: One cannot have every available amenity at once; a choice among alternatives forecloses the others.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "One cannot have all amenities" , recorded as a variant of a preceding entry (4633) making the same point with a different named farm.
Notes: The named farm, Ǹtọ̀fà, and its specific menu of exclusive food-pairings, gives an abstract principle about exclusive choice a concrete, almost rule-like local setting, evidence of how thoroughly Yorùbá proverb-speech grounds general claims in named, particular circumstances rather than leaving them as pure abstraction.
Source: Owomoyela 4634; compare 4633.
Literal: A kì í kó imí tán one does-not remove excrement completely kó tún máa rùn and-yet have-it continue-to-smell.
Idiomatic: "One does not remove excrement and yet endure its stink."
Meaning: Once a problem is genuinely resolved, its unpleasant aftereffects should end with it.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "Once a problem is resolved, there should be an end to its attendant bad blood"
Notes: The blunt physical image argues by absurdity: if the underlying problem is truly gone, its consequence logically cannot persist, and lingering resentment after a genuine resolution is treated as evidence the resolution was not, in fact, complete.
Source: Owomoyela 4636.
Literal: A kì í rí ẹkùn kékeré one never sees a-small leopard.
Idiomatic: "One never sees an insignificant leopard."
Meaning: Never minimise any danger; even the smallest instance of a genuinely dangerous category carries the full weight of that danger.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "Never minimize any danger"
Notes: The leopard, a recurring figure for danger and predation across this corpus, is used here to argue that category membership, being a leopard at all, matters more than relative size within the category, a distinct logical move from most size-based proverbs in the collection.
Source: Owomoyela 4640.
Literal: A kì í ṣe méjì ní Mẹ́kà one does-not do two-things in-Mecca: a kì í kírun ní Mẹ́kà one does-not perform-the-pilgrimage-rites in-Mecca, ká tún nájà ní Mẹ́kà and-also trade in-Mecca.
Idiomatic: "One does not do two things in Mecca: one does not worship in Mecca [performing the hadj] and also trade in Mecca."
Meaning: Always concentrate on one major project at a time; do not mix sacred and commercial purposes in a single undertaking.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "Always concentrate on one major project at a time"
Notes: This proverb is direct evidence of Islam's integration into Yorùbá proverb-speech, naming Mecca and the hadj pilgrimage as a shared point of reference assumed to be intelligible to the hearer without further explanation, consistent with the layered religious history this corpus notes at several points in the sacred proverb files (70, 74).
Source: Owomoyela 4642.
Literal: A kì í fẹ́hìn akiṣalẹ̀ one does-not lean-away-from the-akiṣalẹ̀-plant wúre to-invoke-blessing.
Idiomatic: "One cannot make good-luck charms without the akiṣalẹ plant."
Meaning: No venture can succeed in the absence of the condition most essential to it.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "No venture can succeed in the absence of the condition most essential for its success"
Notes: The proverb names a specific plant used in the preparation of good-luck charms, connecting this general truism to the medicine and charm-craft vocabulary treated at length in file 76; the essential-ingredient logic here is the same one that runs through several proverbs in that file.
Source: Owomoyela 4643.
Literal: A kì í wáyé one does-not come-to-the-world ká má da nǹkan and not become something; ohun a ó dà la ò mọ̀ what-one-will-become is-what-one does-not-know.
Idiomatic: "One does not come into this world without becoming something; what one does not know is what one will become."
Meaning: Everybody has a future, but no one knows what it is ahead of time.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "Everybody has a future, but no one knows what it is ahead of time"
Notes: This proverb pairs directly with entry 2 above (clairvoyance would remove the mystery from misfortune); together they state the two halves of the same claim, that a person's outcome is fixed but unknown to them, from the perspective of the outcome (entry 2, misfortune already determined) and from the perspective of the open future (this entry, a becoming not yet known).
Source: Owomoyela 4644.
Literal: Àbàtàbútú ojú ọ̀run the-wide-expanse of-the-sky's-face ò hu koríko does-not grow grass.
Idiomatic: "The wide expanse of the sky grows no grass."
Meaning: Certain things can never be, however vast the space in which they might seem possible.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "Certain things can never be"
Notes: The sky's vastness is deliberately invoked and then denied any productive use, a way of arguing that scale alone does not confer possibility; a thing categorically unsuited to bear fruit will not do so no matter how much room it has.
Source: Owomoyela 4654.
Literal: Abẹ̀bẹ̀ ní ḿbẹ ikú it-is-a-fan-or-intercessor that-pleads-with death; abẹ̀bẹ̀ ní ḿbẹ ọ̀ràn it-is-an-intercessor that-pleads-with trouble; bí ọ̀gbọ́nrí bá mú if-sweat grips-one, abẹ̀bẹ̀ ní ḿbẹ a-fan is-what-intercedes.
Idiomatic: "It is an intercessor that pleads with death; it is an intercessor that pleads with trouble; when one is beset with sweat, it is a fan that intercedes for one."
Meaning: There is a means of dealing with any sort of difficulty, however serious.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "There is a means of dealing with any sort of difficulty"
Notes: The proverb uses a single word, abẹ̀bẹ̀, meaning both an intercessory plea and, literally, a hand-fan, across three escalating cases, death, general trouble, and mere physical discomfort from heat, treating each as needing its own appropriate form of the same underlying remedy: something that intervenes and cools or pleads on one's behalf.
Source: Owomoyela 4655, with note 10.
Literal: Ab̀ẹrẹ́ bá ọwọ́ adẹ́tẹ̀ a-needle drops from-a-leper's-hand ó dẹ̀tẹ̀ it-becomes-an-impossible-problem; ọ̀ràn bá ilẹ̀ a-grievous-matter hits-the-ground ó dẹ̀rọ̀ it-becomes-deep-contemplation.
Idiomatic: "A needle drops from a leper's hand and presents an impossible problem; a grievous matter hits the ground and imposes deep contemplation."
Meaning: Certain problems defy easy solution, resisting the ordinary remedy a less complicated version of the same problem would allow.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "Certain problems defy easy solution"
Notes: A leper's impaired hands make retrieving a dropped needle, an ordinarily trivial task, genuinely difficult, and the proverb uses this specific physical disability as its concrete case before generalising to any problem whose difficulty is compounded by an underlying condition.
Source: Owomoyela 4656.
Literal: Abiyamọ a-nursing-mother ló mọ̀wọ́ jà is-who knows-how-to-tie-the-child-carrying-strip.
Idiomatic: "It is a nursing mother that is adept at tying the child-support strip."
Meaning: One cannot outperform an expert at their own trade.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "One cannot beat an expert at his or her trade"
Notes: The specific, everyday skill named, tying the cloth strip used to carry a baby on the back, roots a general claim about expertise in a task recognisable and universally understood within the culture, rather than in an abstract profession.
Source: Owomoyela 4657.
Literal: Adùn-únṣe pleasant/easy-to-do bí àlejò omi like [hosting] a-guest [who wants only] water.
Idiomatic: "Painless hospitality, like one requiring only the offering of water."
Meaning: A good deed that entails hardly any cost is easily and cheerfully performed.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "A good deed that entails hardly any cost is easily and cheerfully performed"
Notes: Hospitality is a major and materially demanding obligation elsewhere in Yorùbá proverb-speech (see the household and family proverbs of files 10 and 11 in this corpus section); this proverb marks out the specific, minimal case, a guest wanting only water, as the frictionless limit of that obligation.
Source: Owomoyela 4658.
Literal: Afẹ́fẹ́ lẹlẹ turbulent wind ò jẹ́ ká gbé orí igi does-not allow living atop-a-tree; àgbàrá òjò a-flash-flood ò jẹ́ ká gbé ilẹ̀ lílẹ does-not allow living low-on-the-ground.
Idiomatic: "Turbulent winds dissuade one from living atop a tree; flash floods dissuade one from living on the ground."
Meaning: Life offers no risk-free options; every position, high or low, carries its own exposure to some hazard.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "Life offers no risk-free options"
Notes: The two hazards named are structurally opposite (wind threatens height, flood threatens low ground), which makes the proverb's claim genuinely exhaustive within its own image: there is no third, safer position between the two extremes it names.
Source: Owomoyela 4661.
Literal: À ń dín i we are-frying it, kò dùn it-is-not-tasty, ni à ń wí pé adìẹ ní ìtan mẹ́ta is-when we say the-chicken has three-thighs.
Idiomatic: "It is when one fries a chicken but it does not taste good that one says it had three thighs."
Meaning: A bad cook blames the ingredients rather than accepting responsibility for the result.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "A bad cook quarrels with his ingredients"
Notes: The absurd claim, a chicken with three thighs, is itself the joke: rather than admit a straightforward failure of skill, the excuse invents a physically impossible defect in the raw material, a specific and vivid case of the more general pattern of blame-deflection this corpus documents elsewhere (see owe-iwa-character entry 39, on the person of evil character thinking every remark targets them).
Source: Owomoyela 4645.
Literal: A ò mọ̀ one does-not know ibi orí ḿbá ẹsẹ̀ rè where the-head will-accompany the-feet's-going.
Idiomatic: "No one knows where the head will accompany the feet."
Meaning: The future is hidden from us; even one's own guiding destiny does not disclose in advance where it will lead.
Used when: Owomoyela's note glosses the claim as evidence that the future is hidden .
Notes: Owomoyela's footnote makes an important clarification: orí here is not the physiological head but the repository of a person's destiny, and the proverb, despite its surface wording, actually means that no one knows where orí will guide or conduct the feet; he adds that it can also be used to suggest that although orí directs one's destiny, it is the feet that do the actual walking, and they may conduct orí wherever suits them, a small but genuine reversal of the expected direction of agency between destiny and the body it inhabits [S1, note 5]. This nuance connects directly to the fuller orí-as-destiny material in file 79.
Source: Owomoyela 4647, with note 5.
Literal: A ò mọ̀ one does-not know iṣu tí yó kẹ́hìn ọgbà which-yam will-be-last in-the-barn.
Idiomatic: "No one knows which yam will be the last in the barn."
Meaning: Parents do not know which of their children will survive them longest.
Used when: Used as a somber observation on the unpredictability of which offspring will outlive the rest.
Notes: The yam-barn image translates a genuinely difficult, private grief-adjacent observation, uncertainty about which child will be the last living, into an agricultural metaphor drawn from ordinary household provisioning, a characteristic move of this proverb tradition toward the concrete and the domestic even for its heaviest subjects.
Source: Owomoyela 4648.
Literal: A pa ìgbín we kill a-snail a ò bá pọ́n we-find no red-matter; a pa ìrẹ we kill a-cricket a ò kan ẹ̀jẹ̀ we-touch no blood.
Idiomatic: "We kill a snail but find no red matter; we kill a cricket and find no blood."
Meaning: One cannot expect the same outcome from creatures, or people, of fundamentally different natures.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "One cannot expect to get blood out of a turnip; not all creatures are alike"
Notes: Owomoyela's footnote confirms the natural-history basis of the claim directly: neither a snail nor a cricket has red blood, so the "disappointment" described is built into the nature of the creatures rather than being any real failure [S1, note 6]. The proverb's argument depends entirely on the hearer already knowing this biological fact, which the image then repurposes for disappointed human expectation generally.
Source: Owomoyela 4649, with note 6.
Literal: A rí èèmọ̀ lÉréko we saw an-abomination at-Eréko: ajá wọ̀ẹ̀wù ó róṣọ a-dog wore-a-blouse and wore-a-wrapper.
Idiomatic: "We saw an abomination at Eréko: a dog wore a blouse and wore a wrapper around its waist."
Meaning: The world is full of wonders and unnatural-seeming sights.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "The world is full of wonders"
Notes: Owomoyela's footnote identifies Eréko as a market ward in Lagos, and offers a historically grounded guess at the image's origin: it is tempting to suspect the reference is to the covers colonial British residents placed on their dogs during the relatively chilly tropical periods, since no African person, he notes, would ordinarily think to clothe a dog [S1, note 7]. This makes the proverb a candidate for the same kind of colonial-era historical dating discussed in file 91, though Owomoyela offers it as a plausible reading rather than a certainty, and this corpus reports that hedge rather than upgrading his suggestion to fact.
Source: Owomoyela 4650, with note 7.
Literal: A tẹ́ ní bẹẹrẹ we-spread [the-divination-mat] wide, kò sí odà there-is-no client; a pàjùbà bẹẹrẹ we-clear-the-field widely, kò sí okọ́ there-is-no farmer/tiller.
Idiomatic: "We spread the divination mat wide, but there is no client; we clear the field for planting, but there is no tiller."
Meaning: Some human preparations and aspirations come to nothing despite genuine effort invested in them.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "Some human aspirations come to nought"
Notes: The proverb pairs a religious-professional preparation (a diviner readying his mat) with an agricultural one (a farmer clearing land), treating both as equally vulnerable to the same disappointment, unmet demand, which places divination and farming on the same practical footing as ordinary human enterprises rather than granting the former any special immunity to failure.
Source: Owomoyela 4651.
Literal: A ti oko ìrókò we-have-gone-from the-ìrókò-tree farm de oko ìrokòtò to-the gully-farm.
Idiomatic: "We have gone from hoeing a farm to hoeing a gully."
Meaning: Matters have gone from bad to worse.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "Matters have gone from bad to worse"
Notes: The play between ìrókò (the substantial hardwood tree, standing for a real, worthwhile farm) and ìrokòtò (a gully, unworkable land) turns on the near-rhyme of the two words, a further instance of the near-homophone wordplay this corpus documents at length in file 93, here used for a plain statement of decline rather than for a genuine ambiguity.
Source: Owomoyela 4652.
Literal: Àbálé one-after-another lọ̀ràn ìpilẹ̀ is-how-problems-of-the-foundation ḿbá ògiri befall the-wall.
Idiomatic: "It is one after the other that problems of foundation-building befall walls."
Meaning: Problems have a way of piling on one another once a structure's foundation is unsound.
Used when: Owomoyela's note: "Problems have a way of piling on one another"
Notes: Construction imagery, a wall's problems tracing back to its foundation, gives a general claim about compounding difficulty a specific, checkable physical logic: a flawed foundation genuinely does produce a predictable cascade of later structural problems, which is why the metaphor works as well as it does.
Source: Owomoyela 4653.
Literal: Àfẹ́ dànù to-be-blown-away-and-scattered ni tìyangbò is-the-fate-of-fallen-leaves.
Idiomatic: "To be blown away in the wind is the fate of fallen leaves."
Meaning: The person this saying is directed at will not escape an evil fate, just as fallen leaves cannot avoid being scattered by the wind.
Used when: Owomoyela flags this specifically as an incantational proverb, one directed pointedly at a particular person to assert that they will not escape their coming misfortune .
Notes: This is one of a small number of proverbs across Owomoyela's whole collection explicitly marked as functioning in incantation rather than only in commentary (compare file 79, entry 12, similarly flagged); the fallen-leaf image gives the assertion of inescapable fate a natural, observable certainty, since scattered leaves genuinely have no means of resisting the wind.
Source: Owomoyela 4660.
Owomoyela's own placement of these proverbs outside his five main thematic parts is instructive. Several (entries 2, 13, 21) bear directly on the doctrine of destiny treated at length in file 79, yet he filed them as truisms rather than as fate proverbs, evidence that his own categorisation was not doctrinaire; a proverb about not knowing the future can be read equally as a statement about epistemic limitation in general or about orí specifically, and Owomoyela let the more general reading determine placement. Several others (entries 11, 24) carry the same kind of internal historical or religious marker this corpus documents in files 91 and 96, further evidence that a "miscellany" section is not a residual category free of the corpus's other concerns, only one where a single dominant theme did not present itself clearly enough to justify a dedicated file.
Fifty Yorùbá proverbs on ọ̀run-àpáàdì, orí and àyànmọ́ (fate and destiny), drawn from Owomoyela's dedicated section "On fate (and reciprocity)," showing destiny as chosen before birth, unappealable, yet compatible with real human effort.
Thirteen Yorùbá proverbs built on méjì (two) and other numerals, showing a productive formula, "two X cannot Y in the same place," used repeatedly to argue that rival powers or claims cannot share one space.
Fifty-eight Yorùbá proverbs on character, presented with the original, a literal gloss, a named translation, and the situation each is spoken in.
Forty-eight Yorùbá proverbs on the ọmọlúàbí ideal, presented with the original, a literal gloss, a named translation, and the situation each is spoken in.
Sourced Yorùbá proverbs about telling the truth, the mechanics of lying and self-deception, and the value placed on a person whose word is reliable.
Forty-three Yorùbá proverbs on sùúrù, patience, presented with the original, a literal gloss, a named translation, and the situation each is spoken in.