practice what you preach

Practice what you preach.

Prov. Cliché You yourself should do the things you advise other people to do. Dad always told us we should only watch an hour of television every day, but we all knew he didn't practice what he preached.

practice what you preach

Behave as you would have others behave, as in You keep telling us to clean up, but I wish you'd practice what you preach. This idiom expresses an ancient idea but appeared in this precise form only in 1678. Also see do as I say.

Common Names:

Name	Pronounced	Usage
Laelia	-	Ancient Roman
Blago	-	Croatian
ÙNa	OO-na	Scottish
Bao	-	Chinese
Iolana	-	Hawaiian
Cecilia	sə-SEE-lee-ə (English), sə-SEEL-yə (English), che-CHEE-lyah (Italian), the-THEE-lyah (Spanish), se-SEE-lyah (Latin American Spanish), se-SEEL-yah (Danish, Norwegian), SE-see-lee-ah (Finnish)	English, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Dutch, German