Clever-sounding but almost certainly not Chinese proverbs

[cherypi]

Well, this most likely is in the wrong place but here goes.
upon telling a quote to a friend of mine he thought it came from XKCD (he is a much more avid fan of XKCD than I ever will be). but it didn't. I had created it, so i thought, "i ought to put this somewhere on the internet so people everywhere can hate me for it, or think its neat." that being said, here it is:
"if you give a man a mint,
he will have good breath for a day.
If you teach a man to mint,
he will be in jail for a lifetime."
yeah. i know. you hate me already because i just wasted your time for that. well haha, now you read it and you cant do anything about it.

[InNombreDeQuién]

Another interesting chines Proverb, which can be used as a general curse:

"May you live in interesting times!"



Your friends proverb derives from the old saying:
"If you give a man fish he is fed for a day,
if you teach him to fish he is full for his life"

[SlyReaper]

If you light a man a fire, he'll be warm for a day.
If you light a man on fire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

[diabolo]

If you light a man a fire, he'll be warm for a day.
If you light a man on fire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

Would it be correct English to write it using "set a man a fire / set a man afire" ?

[SlyReaper]

Possibly, but I have never heard of "afire" being an actual word. It should be.

[Kizyr]

信言不美，美言不信。
善者不辯，辯者不善。

Am I doing it right? KF

[TheGrammarBolshevik]

Apart from Kizyr's, I get the impression that none of these things are Chinese and we're just using the word "Chinese" to mean "clever-sounding like them Orientals."

ಠ_ಠ

[Iulus Cofield]

Apart from Kizyr's, I get the impression that none of these things are Chinese and we're just using the word "Chinese" to mean "clever-sounding like them Orientals."

ಠ_ಠ

Yeah....

If you light a man a fire, he'll be warm for a day.
If you light a man on fire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

Would it be correct English to write it using "set a man a fire / set a man afire" ?

I think "set a man a fare" is ungrammatical, since I don't think "set" can be used with dative objects, but I believe the second one is correct, although it sounds folksy or perhaps faux old timey.

[Meteorswarm]

道可道非常道也
名可名非常名也

[cazadoremi]

道可道非常道也
名可名非常名也

这是什么意思？ 我觉得很有趣

Here's my favorite - 吃一堑长一智
Fall in a moat, get a little wiser.
People learn from (sometimes traumatic and undignified) experience.

[Kizyr]

Would you be so kind as to translate the other proverbs/sayings? I don't actually speak Chinese -- well, not to any useful level anyway.

I'll translate for mine:

信言不美，美言不信。
善者不辯，辯者不善。

is a line from the Dao De Jing, 81:1-4

Roughly:
True words are not fancy, fancy words are not true.
The good do not debate, debaters are not good.

Alternate translation (http://www.chinapage.com/gnl.html):
Honest people use no rhetoric; Rhetoric is not honesty.
Enlightened people are not cultured; Culture is not enlightenment.
KF

[Meteorswarm]

Mine's the first line of the dao de jing.

Roughly,
The way that can be spoken of is not the eternal way;
A name that can be named is not an eternal name.

It's also got a pun on 道 meaning both "the way" and "to speak" (classical chinese only, modern usage doesn't do this). The point of the quote is that speaking about some things inherently limits them to the scope of your discussion, while in reality they are incomprehensibly more complex.

[JamesP]

Set a man aflame.
Set a man alight.

But set him afire? Ew...

[Meteorswarm]

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=afire%2C+aflame%2C+alight&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

and also,

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=man+afire%2C+man+aflame%2Cman+alight&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

"afire" is totally fine.