Most of these proverbs were collected by S.Coffin and he kindly gave me permission to publish the list. Some of these proverbs were merged into the Internet Go Dictionary.

The aphorisms by Pierre Audouard appeared between 1994 and 1995 in the French Go Review under the title "Some words about Go", and signed by Jean de Laveline (pseudonym of Pierre Audouard) and were translated by Tom Keel.

By default the proverbs are shown in a predefined order Alternatively, you can have them shuffled (the order is randomized) or ordered by author.

• Keshi is worth as much as an invasion!  --  anonymous
• If you don't know ladders, don't play go  --  anonymous
• At the head of three stones in a row, play hane  --  anonymous
• Fighting must not be the key to go, it should be reserved as your last resource.
  zhong-pu liu, 1078 AD
• If one player chooses influence, the other player may choose territory, and vice versa  --  anonymous
• Everything would seem to be possible in go. Like pulling a rabbit, by a magical move, out of a hat.
  Audouard, Pierre
• The poor player plays the opponent's game for him  --  anonymous
• Don't play in direct contact with the opponent's stone caught in your squeeze-play  --  anonymous
• Don't make compact groups of stones  --  anonymous
• Keep away from thickness  --  anonymous
• Empty triangles are bad  --  anonymous
• 2-1 is the vital point in the corner  --  anonymous
• Make your own groups strong first, then attack  --  anonymous
• If you have one stone on the third line, add another, then abandon both of them  --  anonymous
• Don't make dango's  --  anonymous
• On the third line, four die, six live  --  anonymous
• Learn to play under the stones  --  anonymous
• Beware of the clumsy double contact  --  anonymous
• Nothing requires doing this or that, but necessity exists.
  Audouard, Pierre
• Don't count territory held by only one eye!  --  anonymous
• In opponents' sphere of influence, avoid sharp conflict, don't move too deep
  Otake Hideo, 9p
• Learn the eye-stealing tesuji  --  anonymous
• Dead group? Always win ko fights!  --  anonymous
• Do not make moves that strengthen your opponent!  --  anonymous
• Conservative and slow will win. Believe it!  --  anonymous
• Do not fear furikawari  --  anonymous
• Only amateurs try to come up with fancy moves  --  anonymous
• Atari, atari is vulgar play  --  anonymous
• Don't play on dame points, but guarantee connections  --  anonymous
• Sacrifice for shape  --  anonymous
• Capture what you cut off  --  anonymous
• Josekis are not fixed, definitive things. They indicate the moments when everything can change.
  Audouard, Pierre
• There is a thin line between thick and slow.
  jansteen
• From a cross-cut, extend  --  anonymous
• Beware of going back to patch up your plays  --  anonymous
• This time and this space have certain properties, and for a long time, to progress means to become familiar with them.
  Audouard, Pierre
• The simplest move is the best move  --  anonymous
• There are times when even a fight over nothing means something  --  anonymous
• Territory is a closed space where time no longer exists. The transformation around it slowly alter it, and sometimes it cracks open like a rotten egg at the least shock.
  Audouard, Pierre
• Take the cutting stone on the second line  --  anonymous
• Very few good moves are played.
  Audouard, Pierre
• Sometimes an idiotic stone loafs about the goban.
  Audouard, Pierre
• Seek small gains but incur big losses  --  anonymous
• Win the stones, lose the game  --  anonymous
• Strange things happen at the one-two points  --  anonymous
• There is a time and a space which are the same in all go games: the alternating of black and white, and the intersections.
  Audouard, Pierre
• The nature of a game comes from what is played, but it's the sensitivity to the possible and the impossible that gives it value.
  Audouard, Pierre
• If there is a ko inside a semeai, capture it on the final play  --  anonymous
• There are players who clack down ridiculous moves. Certain others place their moves with crisp, dry contact, like bones cracking. Still others drop their stones with a soft sound.
  Audouard, Pierre
• 5 lines for extension in front of shimari
  Yang Yilun, 7p
• Sacrifice and squeeze  --  anonymous
• Everything happens on a grid-engraved board with black and white pieces, but if that's all you see then you don't know Go.
  Audouard, Pierre
• If black doesn't pile up enough errors to lose, then it will soon be time to lower the handicap.
  Audouard, Pierre
• Five liberties for tactical stability  --  anonymous
• One is never aware enough of the violence in go.
  Audouard, Pierre
• Don't make a play adjacent to a cutting-point  --  anonymous
• The enemy's vital point is your own  --  anonymous
• There is no territory in the centre  --  anonymous
• Knight's moves win running battles  --  anonymous
• For rectangular six in the corner, dame is necessary  --  anonymous
• When your opponent has two weak groups, attack them both at once  --  anonymous
• There is a time for doing things.
  Audouard, Pierre
• There is damezumari at the bamboo joint  --  anonymous
• Learning josekis by heart is useless if you don't try departing from them.
  Audouard, Pierre
• The second line is the line of defeat, the third line is the line of territory, and the fourth line is the line of influence  --  anonymous
• Don't peep at cutting points  --  anonymous
• If you have lost four corners, resign  --  anonymous
• Use a wall to attack, not to make territory  --  anonymous
• White is always trying to kill a bigger group than black is trying to save  --  anonymous
• Fill in a semiai from the outside  --  anonymous
• Keep sente in the opening. A premature attack loses sente  --  anonymous
• Extend one hand from the cross-cut  --  anonymous
• If there is no stone on the handicap point, the carpenter's square is dead  --  anonymous
• Corner, side, centre  --  anonymous
• Eyes win semiais  --  anonymous
• Every move brings change.
  Audouard, Pierre
• (A shicho works or doesn't work, but sometimes you don't see it, you don't play it). The possible and the impossible are visible and invisible. What happens is always what you see, what is played.
  Audouard, Pierre
• Pon-nuki is worth thirty points  --  anonymous
• The monkey jump is worth eight points  --  anonymous
• If you plan to live inside enemy territory, play directly against his stones  --  anonymous
• A meijin needs no joseki  --  anonymous
• When you study joseki, you lose two stones in strength  --  anonymous
• Don't make territory near thickness  --  anonymous
• There are players who don't accept exchanges: they play many moves that perpetuate a previous state of the game.
  Audouard, Pierre
• With only one group, you will win  --  anonymous
• If you lose by one point, take a rest  --  anonymous
• The ax's handle rots while the mind lives to the rhythm of the stones.
  Audouard, Pierre
• Beginner's games are surprising, often incoherent and incomprehensible. When you improve, your game gains in consistency but flirts with stupidity: you become satisfied with truisms and mechanical movements, you try to obtain a feeling for clearness and style the easy way.
  Audouard, Pierre
• More haste less speed.
  Fairbairn, John
• The carpenter's square becomes ko  --  anonymous
• You must incessantly question yourself about this time and this space.
  Audouard, Pierre
• If White takes all four corners, Black should resign; if Black takes all four corners, Black should also resign.
  Kent, David
• Keep inessential ataris till the end  --  anonymous
• At the head of two stones in a row, play hane  --  anonymous
• Don't reduce your own liberties.
  Taylor, Bill
• Answer the keima with a kosumi  --  anonymous
• It is difficult to know exactly what you are doing.
  Audouard, Pierre
• Don't try to enclose an open skirt  --  anonymous
• The L-group is dead  --  anonymous
• Never be too sure about your plan, and always doubt your ability to kill your opponent's stones.
  zhong-pu liu, 1078 AD
• When in doubt, remove the enemy stones from the board.
  Taylor, Bill
• Don't get surrounded! Ever!  --  anonymous
• Thickness? Ladders always work! [or don't work if it belongs to your opponent!]  --  anonymous
• Go is a game of chance where the strong player is he who renders circumstances favorable with tricks.
  Audouard, Pierre
• With less than 15 stones in danger, tenuki  --  anonymous
• The weak player fears ko, the strong player seeks it.
  Taylor, Bill
• The semeai where only one player has an eye is a fight over nothing  --  anonymous
• Know the eye-stealing tesuji  --  anonymous
• Turn, turn, turn!
  Taylor, Bill
• Defend weak groups, not strong groups  --  anonymous
• Balance is not what players strive for, and if it does arise, it is in spite of them.
  Audouard, Pierre
• Sacrifice small to take large  --  anonymous
• When your opponent is thick, you must also become thick.
  Otake Hideo, 9p
• If you have won four corners, resign  --  anonymous
• From the way the players perceive what can happen and what shouldn't happen springs what happens.
  Audouard, Pierre
• Error is one of the sources of transformation.
  Audouard, Pierre
• Those who are good at winning, don't usually fight.
  zhang, 1078 AD
• Stop on second, extend on third  --  anonymous
• The strong player plays straight, the weak diagonally  --  anonymous
• Those who are good at making shape don't usually fight.
  zhang, 1078 AD
• Proverbs do not apply to White.
  Sand, Tero
• The intersection is rarely neutral.
  Audouard, Pierre
• If your stone is capped, play the knight's move  --  anonymous
• For the comb formation in the corner, dame is necessary  --  anonymous
• Connect with good shape  --  anonymous
• Shoulder connections, hanging connections, and knight's move connections  --  anonymous
• Attach to the strongest stone in a pincer  --  anonymous
• Use the Knight's move to attack, the 1-point jump to defend  --  anonymous
• Territory really exists only in the end.
  Audouard, Pierre
• There are possible things, impossible things, and things that happen. Sometimes things happen that were impossible.
  Audouard, Pierre
• Strike at the waist of the knight's move  --  anonymous
• Keep your own stones connected, and your opponent's apart.
  Taylor, Bill
• One point in the center is worth ten in the corner  --  anonymous
• Avoid the plate connection  --  anonymous
• The possibility or impossibility of an event results logically from the rules.
  Audouard, Pierre
• Don't make empty triangles  --  anonymous
• Attack two weak groups simultaneously  --  anonymous
• Strange things happen at the one-two points  --  anonymous
• Play slow, win slow; play fast, lose fast  --  anonymous
• Always remember, keep the balance (between territory and influence)
  Figaro
• Don't be greedy!  --  anonymous
• Go is not a blocking game, it's a game of action.
  Audouard, Pierre
• Add one stone, then sacrifice both  --  anonymous
• Don't disturb symmetry  --  anonymous
• One big eye kills one small eye  --  anonymous
• The book says don't fight (The pen is mightier than the sword). But what else can be expected from a book (written by a pen)?  --  anonymous
• When in a winning position, keep the game simple; Make it complex only when losing  --  anonymous
• Five groups might live but the sixth will die  --  anonymous
• Good moves and bad moves are bedfellows  --  anonymous
• To reduce an opponent's large prospective territory, strike at the shoulder  --  anonymous
• To invade, need 20 points in open area; otherwise, keshi is best.
  Yang Yilun, 7p
• The rectangular six is normally alive  --  anonymous
• Grab the border point between two moyos  --  anonymous
• If you cannot succeed, then die gloriously
  Chinese proverb
• The game plays itself, the players don't control it.
  Audouard, Pierre
• The stone in the bowl is idiotic.
  Audouard, Pierre
• Never try to cut bamboo joints  --  anonymous
• The comb formation is alive  --  anonymous
• A knight's move near the edge of the board cannot be cut.
  Taylor, Bill
• Ikken tobi is never wrong  --  anonymous
• There are lines, like roots, that plunge into the stone and shatter it.
  Audouard, Pierre
• Groups mustn't float  --  anonymous
• Don't defend - extend!
  Taylor, Bill
• You have to like to win, and to learn to recognize the errors that gave you the victory.
  Audouard, Pierre
• (Any move that follows the rules is legal). Possibilities differ according to strength.
  Audouard, Pierre
• The saki bottle shape is negative  --  anonymous
• To do or not to do something is not determined by what is done in general, any more than by what is necessary. Doing or not doing something is determined by what you want, and to want in go is to want to win.
  Audouard, Pierre
• Six eyes in a rectangle are alive  --  anonymous
• There is death in the hane  --  anonymous
• You can hide nothing on the goban.
  Audouard, Pierre
• Be a little patient. Keshi works!  --  anonymous
• Don't overlook the edge of the board  --  anonymous
• To emphasize the lack of determination in his moves, one speaks of chance.
  Audouard, Pierre
• Make a fist before striking
  Kim, Jay H.
• Grab the 4th point of the bamboo joint.
  Taylor, Bill
• Does white await black's errors? Certainly, in two ways: either he makes clean, clear, dangerous moves; or he makes confusing, twisted moves that are just as dangerous. The adequate answers are always difficult to find.
  Audouard, Pierre
• Against three in a row, play right in the center  --  anonymous
• Hane? Extend! Make it a habit  --  anonymous
• Big groups never die  --  anonymous
• A basic: Don't push too hard.
  jansteen
• In an unreasonable situation, an unreasonable move is reasonable
  Tamino
• Go is essentially a form of harmony. Go in the 21st century will have to be go of the 'harmony of the six points - the four quarters, the above and the below.' As in life we will need to view the whole rather than the part. Japanese go has focused too heavily on the local (joseki) rather than the whole for 300 years. The reason the Chinese and Koreans are overtaking the Japanese is that they are closer to achieving this whole-board view.
  Go Seigen, 9p, 1994
• If a formation is symmetrical, play at the center  --  anonymous
• In the opening, when you don't know what to play, make a shimari.
  jansteen
• You must always consider the circumstances. Nothing is identical, yet things repeat.
  Audouard, Pierre
• Grab the shape points as kikashi  --  anonymous
• Win the early ko to win the game  --  anonymous
• In the sound of the stone your can hear its purpose.
  Audouard, Pierre
• In the corner, five stones in a row on the third line are alive  --  anonymous
• On the second line six die, eight live  --  anonymous
• Contesting, destabilizing, and threatening are sources of transformation.
  Audouard, Pierre
• Each step in a ladder is worth 7 points  --  anonymous