# Wilhelm Busch's best sayings

From Max and Moritz to Pious Helen and Plisch and Plum: Wilhelm Busch's couplets that became proverbs, each with the work it comes from.

- 0 votes · 14 items
- Nov 18, 2025 · dichter
- https://even.best/en/l/4522/wilhelm-busch-s-best-sayings

## Top 14

1. **Becoming a father isn't hard, / being one, however, is.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Julchen, preface.
2. **The good – of this there is no doubt – / is always the bad we go without.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Pious Helen, closing words.
3. **It's an old custom, as we know: / where there are worries, liqueurs flow!** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Pious Helen, chapter 16.
4. **But here, as everywhere, / things don't turn out the way you think.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Plisch and Plum, chapter one.
5. **Virtue needs encouragement; / wickedness you can manage alone!** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Plisch and Plum, chapter seven.
6. **Stupidity you see in others / usually lifts the spirits.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Spricker. Aphorisms and rhymes.
7. **One-two-three, at a rushing pace / time runs on, and we run with it.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Julchen, A restless night.
8. **So it has been decreed: / that man must learn something indeed.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Max and Moritz, Fourth Trick.
9. **The artist always feels offended / when things don't go as he intended.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Fipps the Monkey, chapter 9.
10. **Music is often found unpleasing, / because it always comes with noise.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Dideldum!, The Mole.
11. **Whoever makes a good roast / has a good heart as well.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Critique of the Heart.
12. **The difficulty's always small, / as long as nothing gets in the way.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Balduin Bählamm, the Thwarted Poet, ending.
13. **Pains I've had, / those I like.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Adventures of a Bachelor.
14. **Painting pictures comes easily; / finding people who'll pay for them doesn't.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Painter Klecksel, chapter 5.

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