Six Popular French Sayings and Their Origins

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The English language has many sayings, and so does French! Learn six popular French sayings that are full of wisdom and life lessons here.

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1. Après la pluie, le beau temps2. Il n’y a pas de fumée sans feu3. Il faut manger pour vivre et non vivre pour manger4. L’appétit vient en mangeant5. Comme on fait son lit, on se couche6. Pauvreté n’est pas vice

Have you seen or read French sayings? Ever wonder where they come from, those familiar sayings that roll off your tongue without a second thought?

Here are six popular French sayings about life that carry the wisdom, history, and culture of France.

1. Après la pluie, le beau temps

What a poetic way to say better days are ahead and disappointment will turn to hope! The sentence translates literally to, “After the rain, nice weather.”

In English, it’s “Every cloud has a silver lining” because–like life itself–weather is so changeable.

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Two historical parallels:

• It echoes the Latin proverb Post nubila Phoebus (“after the clouds, the sun”), which compares changing fortune to changing weather. The precise date and origin of the French wording are not established here.
• A similar idea appears in the 17th century when the poet Jean de La Fontaine writes in La Jeune Veuve: “Sur les ailes du Temps la tristesse s’envole; Le Temps ramène les plaisirs,” or sad times give way to pleasurable ones.

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2. Il n’y a pas de fumée sans feu

There’s no smoke without fire—you can’t deny that! More commonly phrased as, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” this proverb captures nature’s obvious law that fire causes smoke–even if you can’t see the fire. So when your friend blushes at the mention of a certain someone’s name, and then coyly asks, “Why do you think I’m interested in him?”, you might repeat this saying.

And speaking of spreading rumors about lovers, the saying goes back to an ancient Roman proverb, often credited to the playwright Plautus: “Flamma fumo est proxima” (“flame is next to smoke”), meaning rumors are rarely entirely unfounded.

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3. Il faut manger pour vivre et non vivre pour manger

Food and drink—dear to the heart of French culture—are often the source of sayings offering advice for a healthy life. Here, the French typically say, “We must eat to live and not live to eat,” meaning, don’t give in to excess.

This adage goes way back:

• Though it is often attributed to Socrates in 5th-century BC Greece, this wisdom is also found in the Latin phrase “Esse oportet ut vivas, non vivere ut edas,” which translates closely to the French saying.

• Molière, however, centuries later in 1668, popularized it in his comedy, The Miser (L’Avare). In one scene, Harpagon, the miser, is throwing a dinner party and asks his cook for the menu. Wanting to spare expenses but not seem cheap, Harpagon’s steward, Valère, claims a healthier (less meaty) menu is better for their guests. After all, he says, you should eat to live, not live to eat.

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4. L’appétit vient en mangeant

More eating advice, this common proverb, L’appétit vient en mangeant, means appetite comes with eating. Put another way, “Plus on a, plus on veut avoir,” the more you have the more you want. Though centered on food, it applies to any obsession, whether candy, shoes, vacations, or even books!

The aphorism can criticize greed—with its insatiable appetite for food, drink, and material things. But note three other interesting facts about this expression:

• The expression is attested in the 16th century in the French writer Rabelais’s book Gargantua. He wrote, “L’appétit vient en mangeant, la soif s’en va en buvant,” loosely translated as appetite comes with eating, thirst goes away with drinking.

• However, some French sources credit the saying to the translator Jacques Amyot (1513-1593), who later became bishop of Auxerre. But the expression is already found in Rabelais’s earlier book; that does not prove he invented it.

• And even before the French, the same idea appears in ancient Latin. The Roman poet Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, describes the mythological Erysichthon, who sold his own daughter into slavery for food and even ate his own flesh! The more he eats, the more he wants food.

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5. Comme on fait son lit, on se couche

As popular in English as in French, this adage translates to, “As you make your bed, so you lie in it,” or, as my mother would shout, “You made your bed, now lie in it!” Like its biblical cousin, “You reap what you sow,” these words warn that you suffer the consequences of your actions.

Though the origins of this phrase are unclear, the literal image discussed by expressio.fr is straightforward: if you make a bed poorly, say, with tangled sheets that may strangle you in your sleep, you’ll have a bad night’s sleep. Figuratively, the bed stands for the consequences of your choices. The English word “bed” can also mean a flower bed, but that is not the meaning of the French word lit.

On the positive side, the opposite is also true—make a good bed and sleep soundly!

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6. Pauvreté n’est pas vice

Finally, Pauvreté n’est pas vice or On ne peut pas reprocher à quelqu’un sa pauvreté comme un vice, means you can’t blame someone for being poor—because poverty isn’t a vice!

Unfortunately, throughout history and even today, the poor have suffered more than poverty. But the poor have had their famous defenders who made this saying popular by their words or deeds:

• In Voltaire’s 18th-century play L’Enfant prodigue (The Prodigal Son), a character remarks that illness alters a handsome face and poverty changes it even more. Those are a character’s words in a comedy, rather than a direct statement by Voltaire that the poor are responsible for their condition.
• However, centuries before, Alexander the Great was not ashamed to speak with the poverty-stricken Diogenes. He even chose Abdalonymus, who had fallen from royalty into poverty, to take the throne of Sidon after the battle of Issus in the 330s BC. Alexander thought no less of the poor for being poor.

So why do we still use these tired, old famous French sayings without a second thought–like instinct? Because they are old—familiar truths that withstood the test of time. They remind us of who we are, good and bad. Nature–human and out there–doesn’t change much throughout the centuries, even if the stories, styles, and names do.

Let us know which of these French sayings you like most and if you have any famous French sayings that we can add to the list.