Russian idioms and proverbs

Пословицы и поговорки

Learning a few proverbs and idioms is a great way to spice up your writing in Russian or to impress your friends when you're over in Russia

The website Wikiquote has a very detailed article here offering Russian proverbs with English translations and explanations of the moral or context in which they're used, whereas this site gives English equivalent sayings as well as literal translations of the Russian. Both sites have stress marks on the Russian to help you pronounce them. A lot of idioms have old fashioned vocabulary that you don't come across often.

Here are some lovely English idioms and the Russian equivalents - you'll see that they usually don't translate directly.