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