W

Walls have ears, bottles have mouths. [A caution against getting tipsy and loose-tonged.]

Walls have ears, paper sliding doors have eyes.

Wash your clothes when the devil is away. [Make [sound and good, fit and fair] use of your opportunities.]

This proverb originated in the eleventh century when a bandit chieftain known as "the devil" ("oni") lived near the capital city, Kyoto, and often attacked the inhabitants. It was only when he was away that the women of the city felt safe enough to go out of their homes to wash their clothes in the streams of the city. Cf. When the cat's away the mice will play.

What is cheap may also be bad.

When considered as my own, lightly weighs the snow of my hat. [The above proverb is a well-known haiku (seventeen-syllable poem). The hat is a broad-brimmed umbrella-like hat of bamboo or sedge grass.]

When politeness is overdone it becomes flattery. [One should be moderate in showing courtesy, and not very sarcastically either.]

When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends.

When the entrance is carefully shut a dog does not come in. [Advice against getting unwelcome guests.]

Wherever you may be, nature can be enjoyed. [A worldwide urbanisation slowly works against enjoying the world Compare:

Today, we have knowledge of many, many things and the relations among human beings have multiplied ad infinitum. But we live in cities that are like deafening factories in awful Babels. [Rudolf Steiner, Esoteric Cosmology]

Why should flowers be seen only when at their best and the moon at its fullest? [Beauty is not to be found only in perfection or completion, but also before and after that.]

Willows when green, flowers when red. [They are best enjoyed in nature, alive.]

Wiping the mouth after eating leeks. [Feigning innocence]

Wisdom and virtue are like the two wheels of a cart.

With the fall of one leaf we know that autumn has come to the world. [A single sign is often enough to foretell the approaching fate of a prosperous man or nation.]