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.

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