Do as You would be done by

Abstract

Many of us are familiar with proverbs in which silence is valued more than speech. Silence is golden; a silent mouth is melodious; those who know most, speak least; or we would rather listen to other people as we have two ears and one mouth (here again, we have to emphasise that listening and hearing are two different senses). In addition, the word listen contains the same letters as the word silent. In our paper I have tried to compare proverbs of three different and rather remote cultures. One of the languages I have chosen is Germanic, another Romanic and the last Slavonic. Despite this fact, it can be stated that the proverbs of these three cultures reflect the wisdom of generations and, despite geographical distance and differences this wisdom is very similar. Our ancestors arrived at conclusions which show that people, and particularly the values they appreciate, are very similar regardless where they live.