Tool Beta
Is It Actually in the Bible?
Phrases people quote as Scripture. The real verse, or the honest answer that there is not one.
Pride goes before a fall
Close, but the actual verse has two parallel lines, and "a fall" isn't paired with "pride" the way it's usually quoted.
Proverbs 16:18, in every translation this tool compares.
The full verse runs in Hebrew parallelism, the standard structure of biblical proverbs, where a second line restates and intensifies the first: "Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall" (Proverbs 16:18). "Pride" is actually paired with "destruction"; "a haughty spirit" is paired with "a fall": two related but distinct warnings, not one.
The popular short form collapses both lines into a single clause and, in doing so, drops the harsher of the two words entirely. The compressed version isn't false to the verse's meaning (pride does lead to a fall, in the sense the proverb intends), but it quietly softens what the actual text says twice, once starkly ("destruction") and once more gently ("a fall").
