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.

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