• ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml
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    7 days ago

    No single words, and nothing that seems too interesting in German, but there’s a good Cantonese phrase that encompasses that sentiment:

    殺人放火金腰帶,修橋補路無屍骸

    shā rén fàng huǒ jīn yāo dài, xiū qiáo bǔ lù wú shī hái

    Roughly, “murder and arson earn a gold belt; doing good deeds (lit. building bridges and repairing roads) leaves no corpse (i.e. you die in a way that no one can find your body to bury properly).

    • ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online
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      7 days ago

      And yet society is built by the people who make and repair roads and bridges.

      The gold belt I assume is a phrase for wealth and power.