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.

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