Who really said it

When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry

Q: Did William Shakespeare say "When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry"?

No. This line appears in none of Shakespeare's plays, poems, or letters. It is documented across reference works as a Yiddish (Jewish) proverb — anonymous folk wisdom — and Wikiquote files it under Shakespeare's "Misattributed" sayings. No early edition pins the exact English wording, so it is best treated as a traditional proverb, not a Shakespeare quotation.

Not William Shakespeare — a traditional Yiddish proverb Yiddish (Jewish) folk proverb Traditional Ashkenazi Jewish saying · author unknown

Disputed Rights unconfirmed

This line appears in none of Shakespeare’s plays, poems, or letters. It is documented across reference works as a Yiddish (Jewish) proverb — anonymous folk wisdom — and Wikiquote files it under Shakespeare’s “Misattributed” sayings. No early edition pins the exact English wording, so it is best treated as a traditional proverb, not a Shakespeare quotation.

Last verified 14 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry” Traditional Yiddish (Jewish) proverb — not Shakespeare. Author unknown.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to William Shakespeare. Use the credit shown above instead.

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We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

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In context

Evoking the world of Yiddish proverb tradition — author unknown. Theme: "When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Provenance

A folk proverb, not a line from the plays

Real origin: Traditional Yiddish (Jewish) proverb
Popularly credited to: William Shakespeare (no supporting work)
In Shakespeare’s works: Not present in any play, poem, or letter
Status: Misattributed — anonymous folk saying

When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry.

The saying circulates in near-identical form as a Yiddish/Jewish proverb, sometimes rendered “… both weep” for the second clause.

Wikiquote: Shakespeare — Misattributed

How we traced it

Searchable concordances of the complete works return no match; the anti-misattribution project “Not By Shakespeare” reviews the line and concludes “it’s not Shakespeare,” finding only references to a “Jewish proverb” (Shakespeare Geek / Not By Shakespeare).
Wikiquote lists the exact line in its William Shakespeare “Misattributed” section, noting it is “attributed in English sources as a Yiddish proverb.”
Quotation databases that name an author credit an anonymous “Yiddish Proverb,” not Shakespeare — consistent with the folk-saying origin.

This is an anonymous traditional proverb: no single author and no first-publication edition can be tied to the exact English wording, so no copyright status can be asserted. The underlying folk saying is old and unowned, but a particular modern printed translation could itself be under copyright — we make no public-domain claim for a specific rendering we cannot source.

Fact-check

Why Shakespeare gets the credit

Feel-good, aphoristic lines gravitate toward famous names, and Shakespeare is the single biggest magnet for “wise-sounding” quotes in English. This proverb’s polished antithesis sounds Shakespearean, so it was pinned on him — but it is a folk saying he never wrote.

William Shakespeare Misattributed

The line is in none of the plays, poems, or sonnets, and Wikiquote catalogues it in Shakespeare’s “Misattributed” section. Quote-image sites nonetheless mass-produce it over his name.

Yiddish (Jewish) folk tradition Anonymous

Reference works and quotation databases consistently label it a Yiddish / Jewish proverb of unknown authorship — occasionally also cited as a Serbian proverb, underscoring that it is unowned folk wisdom rather than one writer’s line.

There is no primary Shakespeare source because he did not write it: the line is a traditional Yiddish proverb, as the Not By Shakespeare project and Wikiquote both find.

Context

What the proverb means

The saying turns on a single reversal. A father giving to his son is the natural order — provision flowing downward, forward into the future — and so “both laugh.” A son giving to his father inverts that order: it usually means the father can no longer provide for himself, that age and dependence have arrived, and so “both cry.” The joy and the grief spring from the same act of giving, pointed in opposite directions across the generations.

This bittersweet, hard-earned wisdom is exactly the register of Yiddish folk proverbs — which is why it reads as ancient and true, and why it never needed a Shakespeare to have said it.

Provision flowing forward is joy; provision flowing back is loss.

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Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

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Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Wikiquote: Shakespeare (Misattributed)en.wikiquote.org

Lists this exact line among sayings wrongly credited to Shakespeare, noting the Yiddish-proverb attribution.

Not By Shakespeare: this quoteshakespearegeek.com

Dedicated debunk concluding “it’s not Shakespeare” and identifying it as a Jewish proverb.

Goodreads: Yiddish Proverbgoodreads.com

Files the line under an anonymous “Yiddish Proverb,” not Shakespeare.

Wikiquote: Yiddish proverbsen.wikiquote.org

Background collection of documented Yiddish proverbs and the tradition this saying belongs to.

Open Source Shakespeare (concordance)opensourceshakespeare.org

Searchable full text of the complete works — returns no occurrence of this line.

The true source

Anonymous Jewish folk wisdom

Yiddish proverb tradition

Traditional Ashkenazi Jewish saying · author unknown

Yiddish proverbs are the distilled folk wisdom of Ashkenazi Jewish communities of Central and Eastern Europe, carried orally over centuries before being gathered into printed collections. This saying captures a bittersweet truth about the generations: a parent gives to a child joyfully, while a grown child giving back to an aging parent carries an ache of role-reversal. Like most proverbs it has no known individual author — and no connection to Shakespeare.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented as

Traditional Yiddish (Jewish) proverb, of unknown authorship; catalogued among Shakespeare misattributions by Wikiquote, “William Shakespeare — Misattributed.”

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry’?” Last verified 14 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/when-a-father-gives-to-his-son-both-laugh-when-a-son-gives