Hey, everyone. I'm Alex. Thanks for clicking, and welcome to this lesson on five more popular
English proverbs. So if you've seen my other lesson on popular English proverbs, get ready
for more of the same with five new ones.
So to quickly review, proverbs are sayings or wise words or words of advice that people
have in a culture. They are culturally specific. So some proverbs are used in many countries,
more than one language, but some of them don't. The whole purpose of a lesson like this is
to help you guys to memorize and know how to say these proverbs in English. Again, let's
not waste any more time, and we'll start with No. 1.
"Practice makes perfect." This simply means the more you do something, the better you
will be at it. If you want to improve your ability in a musical instrument or some kind
of sport or even something like learning a new language, the more you practice, the better
you will get. "Practice makes perfect." Let's look at No. 2
"Don't judge a book by its cover." This means don't judge someone or something by their
appearance or by their looks alone. So for example, I have two books here, "The Republic
of Plato", "Poland" by James Michener. They don't look that exciting on the covers. It's
just words, just a lot of white space, a lot of purple space. But if you open them up,
if you read them, you'll see that there is some really good and exciting stuff in both
of these of books. So don't judge a book or a person or a restaurant or anything by its
cover. Let's move on to No. 3.
"Two heads are better than one." Simply put, it is better to work on something as a team
than to do it just by yourself. So if you're working by yourself on a project at work or
if you're working on a project at school, maybe if you only have your ideas, it's more
difficult to make the project successful. But if everyone works together, that project
can be more successful, and you can get more done quicker, like me and Steve here. Now,
let's move on to No. 4.
"Don't put all of your eggs in one basket." This means that you shouldn't put all of your
resources or all of your hopes just on one possibility or one dream. So for example,
if you want to become an astronaut and you take all of your free time, all of your money,
and all of your hopes, and you put it on this one dream, if this one dream doesn't become
real, you'll be very disappointed. So this is a life philosophy. "Don't put all of your
eggs in one basket." Now, let's move on to No. 5.
"No man is an island." This means that no one is truly capable of living alone, living
by themselves, because they will not be happy in the long term. So you cannot live alone.
You cannot be by yourself because it affects your emotional health over a long period of
time. You need friends; you need connections; you need family to be a healthy human being,
just like me and by buddy Steve here. Now, let's look at all of these proverbs and review
them one more time.
Okay. So we started off with, "Practice makes perfect." This means the more you do something,
the better you'll become at it.
Then we went to, "Don't judge a book by its cover." We said this means don't judge a person
or a thing based on its appearance. So for example, if a person looks poor, you don't
really know that they're poor. Or if you judge them to be dangerous because of their clothes
or their hair, maybe they're the nicest people you've ever met. Who knows? Don't judge them
by their cover, by their appearance.
Next, we had, "Two heads are better than one." You can get more done as a team by working
together than you can independently.
Then, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." This means don't depend on one hope or one
dream and use all of your resources to accomplish that thing.
And finally, "No man is an island." No one can live truly alone and be happy over the
long term.
Again, the whole purpose of these proverbs is to get you guys to memorize them exactly
how they are worded. If even one word is different, then the meaning is lost or can be lost depending
on the person you're speaking to. So memorize them.
That's it for this lesson. If you'd like to test your understanding of the proverbs, make
sure that you've memorized them all, as always, you can check out the quiz at www.engvid.com.
And don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel. See you, guys. Bye.