Ìwà lẹwà.
Character as the ground of a person
Ìpilẹ̀
Ìwà lẹwà.
Ìtumọ̀ ọ̀rọ̀-sí-ọ̀rọ̀
- Ìwà character lẹwà is-the-beauty.
Ìtumọ̀ Gẹ̀ẹ́sì
"Character is beauty."
Orísun náà kò dárúkọ ẹni tí ó túmọ̀ rẹ̀.
Ohun tí ó túmọ̀ sí
Beauty is a property of character, not of appearance.
Ìgbà tí a ń lò ó
Spoken to correct someone weighing a person, especially a prospective spouse, by looks. Owomoyela glosses it "A person is as beautiful as his or her character is good"
Àkíyèsí lórí ìtumọ̀
The near-rhyme of ìwà and ẹwà carries the claim phonetically and English cannot reproduce it. Because ìwà is built on wà, to exist, the sentence also reads "existence is beauty," and Yorùbá does not force a choice between the two readings the way a translation must. This is the single most-quoted Yorùbá proverb on character and it appears in almost every collection.