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.

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