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it's an ill bird that fouls its own nest. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
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English
Proverb
it's an ill bird that fouls its own nest
- A condemnation of anyone who damages their own group, reputation or interests.
1872, John Ruskin, The Eagle's Nest:They say it's an ill bird that fouls its own nest. My own feeling is that a well-behaved bird will neither foul its own nest nor another's, but that, finding it in any wise foul, it will openly say so, and clean it.
1893, Robert Louis Stevenson, Catriona:It's an ill bird that fouls his own nest, and we are all Scots folk and all Hieland.
2005, Richard Ostrofsky, Sharing Realities: Toward an Epistemology of Conversation, →ISBN, page 173:The saying, “It's an ill bird that fouls its own nest” expresses the most universal of ethical norms, and is probably the source of all such norms.
2013, Charles Macnab, Understanding the Thomas D'Arcy McGee Assassination, →ISBN:He admitted then to having had, for two years, “documents in possession sufficient to have destroyed , but thought it was an ill bird that fouled its own nest.
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