I have 3 but would LOVE to hear more....

You can always have more but you can't have less

This one's from my dad and it really stuck with me. You can, and really should, apply this to any intoxicant.

On the pitch is off the streets

This is about getting restless kids, or kids who might be in a bad situation, into sports.

The axe forgets but the tree remembers

Translation on this one: People who cause hurt are less likely to remember than those it affected.

Ignore negative people, they have a problem for every solution.
When the wind changes, some will build walls, others build windmills.
When God created man, she was only joking.

I love all of these but OMG really love the first one.

Moving the body moves the mind.

It could always be worse.

The future will always surprise you.

If it's your job to eat a frog every day, eat it for breakfast. If it's your job to eat two frogs, eat the big one first.

All you can do is your best, and your best will always be good enough.

Just because something is old doesn't mean it's obsolete, and just because something is obsolete doesn't mean it's ineffective.

Perfection is the enemy of progress

The classic weekend/party safety brief

• Do NOT add to the population.
• Do NOT subtract from the population.
• Do NOT end up in the newspaper, hospital or jail.
• • If you do end up in jail, establish dominance quickly.

We have a few addendums in my circles.

• A man should be in the newspaper three times, when he is born, when he is wed, and when he dies. (Ron Swanson)

• Never do anything you would be afraid to explain to the paramedics.

(Addressed to my college age relatives, I would always pick them up, the folks dont need to know, you do have to tell the guy scraping your sorry ass off the pavement what you broke)

I have several that I live my life by. Being prompted has caused me to forget all of them

There's a saying in Chinese. It rhymes in Chinese (which makes it so much cooler) but the translated version is this:

Given equivalent units of gold and time, it is easy to trade time for gold, but it is challenging to trade gold for time.

Essentially, be wary of how much you're devoting to your work, because it doesn't matter how successful you are, you will never get your life back

There's another one that I find to be very relevant with the times:

a boat with naturally straighten itself when it nears a bridge

It's a descriptivist version of the English saying "we'll cross that bridge when we get there." Essentially, problems have a way of sorting themselves out when things get desperate enough

In short: Don't worry about it.

In long: If you have a problem, you can either do something about it or you can't. If you can do something about it, do that thing instead of worrying. If you can't, worrying just gives you an additional problem.

I hear that. Sure look, if you think of any of them in a months time I'll still be glad of the learning.

Here's a random weird one that stuck with me for some reason. I was a young child whining about getting ready, how I hated socks. And I grumbled, 'who even invented socks, and why??'

My dad responded "Mr. Socks, and his feet were cold." Which is 100% false, but I feel like that silly answer told me a lot on how to think about stuff.

Love both of these. Thank you!

The purpose of a system is what it does.
Or
The wizards 5th rule: Mind people's actions over words.

When someone tells you who they are, believe them.

And last: Trust your gut.

Edit bonus after reading others responses;

Don't let perfection get in the way of good enough.

It is only when a mosquito lands on your testicles that you realize there is a way to solve problems without using violence.

Only break one law at a time.

For example; If you have an AI executive tied up in the trunk of your car, make sure the tail lights all work.

The US signs contracts in pencil.

If you wait till the last minute, it only takes a minute to do.

HAHAHA. I actually have this one baked into my consciousness. I'm a little more "don't speed if your tax is out of date" though. Think I need to up my game.

Here's a few that stuck with me over the years:

"A circle looks at a square and sees a badly made circle." --Jeff VanderMeer

"Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire." --Gustav Mahler

"If you trust in yourself. . .and believe in your dreams. . .and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy." - - Sir Terry Pratchett

You can't exclaim that everybody hates you. You haven't even met everyone yet.

This reminds of "To a hammer every problem looks like a nail."

Time is the only commodity that you can't make more it. Make sure you spend it well.

"I see now that the circumstances of one's birth is irrelevent, it is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are."

- Mewtwo

The boy complained about his shoes till he met the boy with no feet.

I learned kinda early that we were not rich and I didn't really bug my mom for much.

"The only decision you should do when you are angry is to stop being angry." Timothy Zahn

My father always said ‘wherever you go, there you are’. Meaning don’t be afraid to explore and be comfortable wherever you find yourself.

Then again, when my stepmother hadn’t taken a turkey out to thaw in time for a family dinner such that it was still a bit frozen and she couldn’t get its legs apart to stuff it, he suggested she give it a margarita. So perhaps his advice wasn’t as sage as it sounded.

e: another gem from him, which should be on our family crest: ‘no project is too big to start’. Yeah, maybe don’t take that one to heart.

My most favourite saying is:

Do the right thing, for the sake of it being the right thing.

It has got me far in life, even if there are occasional dips.

Another one that my father taught me: put a smile on your face and make the best of it. (sometimes you can't change the situation, but you can change how you view it.)

I'll share (a crude translation of) a piece of song lyrics. It has two great nuggets of wisdom right next to each other!

"There are no meaningless days
Or if there are the whole life is
So useless that it's better not
To think about it today

And I suppose it won't be a punishment
If we go together for a while
When we turn out to be monsters
Will the good days be a lie even then?"

The first part, for me, is about the meaning of life. How it must come from within and how it is in every moment. The second part is good relationship advice, in my opinion. Duration does not equal quality or significance. (The monsters part I don't consider that important, but for some it may be.) And these points work well together. The meaning is in the moments.

The song is Sielunvihollinen by CMX.

Ooh, along this line:

No matter what you do, pay your accountant and attorney first.

Please do not nail or hammer your testicles. And above all else, don’t google that.

"Happiness is a choice."

At first, I thought that first one was about moving a dead body.

I heard it as, "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Ironically, I heard it from a friend who lived his life striving for perfect, and died of a treatable medical condition because his wife's HMO wasn't good enough for him.

You have to do something poorly before you can do it well.

"You do not treat a man like a gentleman because he is. You treat a man like a gentleman because you are."

As taught by my dad:

Some people think they're hot shit on a silver platter when they're really just cold diarrhea on a paper plate.

Reflexively: Ignore positive people, they are incapable of comprehending or acknowledging problems.

"No matter how bad things may seem, they can't be any better. They can't be any worse. Because that's the way things fucking are, and you better get used to it, Nancy. Quit your bitching."

"... when schedule slippage is recognized, the natural (and traditional) response is to add manpower. Like dousing a fire with gasoline, this makes matters worse, much worse. More fire requires more gasoline, and thus begins a regenerative cycle which ends in disaster."

~ Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man-Month

Everyone who does any kind of project management, especially involving other people, should read The Mythical Man-Month.

I also like this:

"I'm driven by the hope... that I haven't made my best work yet."

~ Paula Scher in the Netflix series Abstract: the Art of Design

Misunderstandings are the norm not the exception.

Meaning being misunderstood and thus ‘communication fails’ happens all the time. Give it your best to be clear and double check when in doubt. Don’t be pissed if someone didn’t understand you.

My friend refers to this as - Don't be stupid while you're being stupid.

Duration does not equal quality or significance.

You're cuttin' a little close to the bone there pal. :'(

I've got some.

"I keep cutting but it's still too short."

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but the willingness to act despite it."

"We see the effects of things, not the things themselves."

That reminds me of "A man with no socks is like a man who has no socks."

Ooh! This reminds me of something similar: You can be the sweetest peach in a barrel full of peaches, but you'll never taste good to someone who doesn't like peaches.

An extension to this:

To learn, you must be willing to do it poorly.
To teach, you must be willing to let others do it poorly.

Oh, I thought of another, which I’ve said to my kid hundreds of times over the years:

‘It’s better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it’, typically with things like an umbrella or water.

Unfortunately I am familiar with the pain Olympics.

Nowadays, it’s disappearing ink. It doesn’t have to be erased; it erases itself.

If you are arrested, you become a Pokémon named Lawyer.