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.

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