One of the ways to deepen one’s understanding of different cultures, peoples and histories is to study proverbs and sayings in various languages. Proverbs and sayings often have an international character and in many cases have equivalents with the same or very similar meaning and structure in different languages. This article examines the semantic and cognitive peculiarities of proverbs and sayings in Kazakh, English and Russian. The authors compare and contrast proverbs and sayings in these three languages, identifying their equivalents in terms of meaning. The analysis is based on Matti Kuusi’s system of classifying proverbs according to thematic principles. These themes largely reflect fundamental aspects of human life and are common to Kazakh, English and Russian paremias. In the article, equivalent proverbs in these three languages are grouped into 13 main themes. The comparison of these fixed expressions shows numerous semantic similarities, which tentatively suggests that, although the languages belong to different families and typological groups, the evolution of human language may go back to a common source.