Virtues in proverbial expressions of serbo-croatia, english and german

Abstract

Virtues, taken as an activity of the soul which is in harmony with wit, play an important role in the life of man and his harmonious relationship with others. Because of a large number of proverbs concerning virtues, they deserve attention and a detailed analysis. In this article the authors analyse virtues like truthfulness, love, honesty, bravery, wisdom, justice, faithfulness and hopefulness, which have found their specific expression in proverbs of Serbo-Croatian, English and German. Proverbs, dealing with virtues in various languages, might show some similarities in comprehension of those virtues in such a way that one can find proverbs which are total equivalents and proverbs equivalent only in meaning and different In lexis and conception. The largest group of proverbs are those proverbs which are completely different, showing specific features of a certain culture and language. The main interest of this article is to show those similarities and differences in comprehension of virtues in various languages.