“An old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb”

“Among the Ibo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.”

“We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n'ani ji onwe ya: "He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.”

“At the most one could say that his chi or ... personal god was good. But the Ibo people have a proverb that when a man says yes his chi says yes also. Okonkwo said yes very strongly; so his chi agreed. ”

“The world is large,” said Okonkwo. “I have even heard that in some tribes a man’s children belong to his wife and her family.”“That cannot be,” said Machi. “You might as well say that the woman lies on top of the man when they are making the babies.”

“Ogbuef Ezedudu,who was the oldest man in the village, was telling two other men when they came to visit him that the punishment for breaking the Peace of Ani had become very mild in their clan. "It has not always been so," he said. "My father told me that he had been told that in the past a man who broke the peace was dragged on the ground through the village until he died. but after a while this custom was stopped because it spoiled the peace which it was meant to preserve.”

“...stories are not always innocent;...they can be used to put you in the wrong crowd, in the party of the man who has come to dispossess you.”