This past Sunday, I was among those offering blessings at the baptism of a friend’s baby. In preparation, I paged through several anthologies and lists of Armenian proverbs that I have collected over the years and made and arranged the selection below.
Let’s sit crooked and talk straight.
The sun will rise whether the rooster crows or not.
Spring comes on the wings of the nightingale.
Birds fly with their wings, people with their kin.
Measure ten times, cut once.
Say it once, listen a thousand times.
Education is a golden bracelet.
You are as many people as the languages you know.
It is better to carry stones with a wise man than to eat pilaf with a fool.
A good tree is better than a bad person.
A lone walnut cannot make noise in a sack.
From heart to heart there is a path.
Tell me who your friend is and I will tell you who you are.
Be neither sweet and swallowed, nor sour and spurned.
Let it be one and fine.
A mother’s blessing will lift the curse of seven priests.
Nancy Kricorian
May 25, 2026