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.

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