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.

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