مثل الاربعة بنص الجمعة Like Wednesday in the middle of the week.

A Syrian proverb from Arabic Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases: 


مثل الاربعة بنص الجمعة  
(mitl arba'a binuS eljama'a)
Literal meaning: Like Wednesday in the middle of the week.
Meaning: refers to someone who sits around when there is work to be done . I think it's similar to the English idiom "like a bump on a log".  

اللی بیشرب البحر ما بغض الساقية He who has drunk the sea does not choke on a brook

A Syrian proverb from Arabic Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases: 


اللی بیشرب البحر ما بغض الساقية 
(illi biyeshrub elbahar maa bighaD elsaaqia)
Literal Meaning: He who has drunk the sea does not choke on a brook
Meaning: Someone who has done a big thing will not fear a small thing.

ناس بيأكلوا جاج ناس بيقعوا بالسياج Some people eat chicken; others fall into the hedge.

A Syrian proverb from Arabic Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases
 ناس بيأكلوا جاج ناس بيقعوا بالسياج

(naas biyakalu jaaj naas biyq'u siyaaj)
Literal meaning: Some people eat chicken; others fall into the hedge ( while chasing chickens).
Meaning: Some people get the benefits; while others do all the work.

منفعه ما منك ضخانك بيعمي

Another Syrian proverb from Arabic Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases:


منفعه ما منك ضخانك بيعمي
Literal meaning: you do not benefit me and your smoke blinds me.
Meaning: Said to someone who does more harm than good, as in the phrase "With friends like these, who needs enemies?"

مثل بقارات جحا

Syrian proverb from Arabic Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases:

مثل بقارات جحا
(mitl baqarit jiha) 
Literal meaning: Like Joha's cow
Meaning: Describes something that drags on for a long time, i.e. a lawsuit.


This proverb comes from one of the traditional Arabic stories featuring the folk hero Joha , called Nasreddin in Persian  (read his Wikipedia article here)
These famous stories are a little like Aesop's fables in Western culture. you can read a collection of them in English here.
Jewitt describes the cow story like this in his book Arabic Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases:
" Jiha slaughtered his cow, sold his meat, and received his pay. After a while, he again demanded paymentfrom each purchaser and received it. He kept on doing this until he died."
I'm not sure why the purchases in the story kept giving Joha money, perhaps I need a more complete version of the story.

روح فاضي وتعا ملان

Syrian proverb from Arabic Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases:


روح فاضي وتعا ملان
(ruh faaDi wa t'ua melan)
Literal meaning: Go out empty and come back full.
Meaning: Said to people who are tightfisted with their family.I think it is equivalent to the English "Charity begins at home"

الحرب بالنظارات هين

Another Syrian proverb from Arabic Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases:

Taken by Professor Fumolatro: 2006

 .الحرب بالنظارات هين
(alharb bil nathaarat heen).
Literal Meaning: Conducting war is easy when you have a telescope.
Meaning: It is easy to known what to do when you can see everything at once. In English, "Hindsight is 20/20."

تا تحج القعقان و ترجع بلا سيقان

taken by Михал Орела in 2007 

Another Syrian proverb from Arabic Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases:


.تا تحج القعقان  و ترجع بلا سيقان
Literal Meaning: Until  the crows go on hajj and return without legs.
Meaning: describes something impossible, as in "when pigs fly"

الهريبه تلتين المراجل و إن صحت المراجل كلها

This proverb is from James Richard Jewett's Arabic proverbs and proverbial phrases 




.الهريبه تلتين المراجل و إن صحت المراجل كلها
(ilharebhi telatan ilmaraajal wa inna sahhit ilmaraajal kuluha)

Literal Meaning: Running is two-thirds of courage, and if it succeeds it is all of courage.
Meaning: discretion is the better part of valor.




This morning I found two books  of Arabic proverbs in the public domain section of Google books: 
The manners and customs of the modern Egyptians by John Lewis Burckhardt and  Arabic proverbs and proverbial 
phrases
 by James Richard Jewett.

Both of these books were written in the late 19th century
 so I don't know if the proverbs are still in use. If you have any info 
on this, comment below. Of the two, Burckhardt is the more well known,
 and I plan to talk about him, but right now I want to  talk about Jewett.

 I like his book because it is the first I've seen about Syrian proverbs, 
and  I like the scholarly way the entries are laid out, with the vowels 
and verb tenses explained and series of meticulous scholarly citations.
 Not only do I feel more erudite after reading this for five minutes, 
but I can just picture him sitting next to a tent somewhere 

in the Syrian desert, surrounded by mountains of reference books.

Apparently  he was in Syria for some reason when he started collecting
 proverbs from his friends. He then wrote them up for his dissertation. 
This is pretty much all I could find out because he has no internet presence

 whatsoever. Granted, he has probably been dead  for seventy years,
 but people who have dead for thousands of years have wikipedia pages, 
and if he is the James Richard Jewett the Harvard Arabic Chair is named for,

 he must  have been well known is his time. Does anyone know anything about him?