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Tuesday, January 22, 2008

proverb

He who begins many things finishes but few. -- Italian proverb

BTW can anyone quote the original Italian version (if it does really exist)?

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am not this is an italian proverb... and I never heard it as a proverb.

But the sentence and its mean remember me something.

In italian should be:
"Chi comincia tante cose, ne finisce poche"

Sorry for my english... I am italian :P

Anonymous said...

Never heard of it actually (and I both am Italian and have a passion for proverbs), but it would be something along the lines of "Chi inizia molto termina poco".

Anonymous said...

Sorry for the double post... but I forgot a "sure" between "I am" and "not" :D

Anonymous said...

"Chi troppo vuole nulla stringe": One who wants too much holds on to nothing.

Anonymous said...

Portuguese: "Quem muito burro toca, algum deixa para trĂ¡s."

English (close): He who keeps many donkeys, leaves some behind.

Really hard to translate well to english :)

Vladislav said...

My response to that is: he who does few things accomplishes few things!

Here is a russian one:
Russian: Ne Mojna sedets na dva stulya c'adin popam

English: You can't sit on two chairs with one butt.

Anonymous said...

Then, here is the Spanish sentence:

Quien mucho abarca, poco aprieta

He who embrace a lot, tight a litte

Anonymous said...

Kau yang memulai, kau yang mengakhiri
Kau yang berjanji, kau yang mengingkari

Rhoma Irama, Kegagalan Cinta

nggak mirip bener, kena2 dikit lahh...
:D

Anonymous said...

i'm italian too, and i never heard such a proverb too :)
there are many similar sentences though in the sense of "trying to achieve too much", but are not exactly proverbs:
salvare capra e cavoli (to save goat and cabbages... it comes from a kind of joke in hich a farmer has to cross a river on a boat with a goat and cabbages but the boat is too small and only two of them per time can get in)
volere la botte piena e la moglie ubriaca (to want a full barrel and a drunk wife... with obviuos meaning :p)

right now i found this on wikiquote (http://it.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cominciare)
"Chi troppo comincia, poco finisce."
that's the exact translation you asked for, only i never heard of it out of wikiquote -_-

Ariya Hidayat said...

To all of you, thanks a lot!