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.

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