you can't keep a good man down
you can't keep a good man down proverb: a person who has talent, resolve, or moral strength will eventually succeed despite having been overlooked, injured, or defeated.
Proverb
you can't keep a good man down
- A person who has talent, resolve, or moral strength will eventually succeed despite having been overlooked, injured, or defeated.
- "Isn't it perfectly splendid, Mr. Pepper, to think that Archie's genius has at last been recognized? How quiet he kept it. I had no idea that Mr. Brackett was even interested in his work. I wonder how he heard of it?"
"Oh, these things get about," I said. "You can't keep a good man down."1915, P. G. Wodehouse, Concealed Art - You can't keep a good man down. Like the corpse in The Trouble with Harry who just won't stay buried, Alfred Hitchcock keeps popping out of his grave to terrify and delight new audiences.1984 March 26, Richard Corliss, “Cinema: The Master Who Knew Too Much”, in Time, retrieved 18 Jan 2018
- "Isn't it perfectly splendid, Mr. Pepper, to think that Archie's genius has at last been recognized? How quiet he kept it. I had no idea that Mr. Brackett was even interested in his work. I wonder how he heard of it?"
Examples of you can't keep a good man down in a sentence
- He cut a sorry figure after the thumping by England, but you can't keep a good man down.2000 April 3, Chris Hewett, “Rugby: Running talent will put life into Lions”, in Independent, UK, retrieved 18 Jan 2018:
- But even at 85, you can't keep a good man down, and he was able to recover.2013 January 22, Jack Goodstein, “Music Review: Boyd Lee Dunlop—The Lake Reflections”, in Seattle Post-Intelligencer, retrieved 18 Jan 2018:
Questions about you can't keep a good man down
- What does you can't keep a good man down mean?
- You can't keep a good man down means a person who has talent, resolve, or moral strength will eventually succeed despite having been overlooked, injured, or defeated.
- How do you use you can't keep a good man down in a sentence?
- He cut a sorry figure after the thumping by England, but you can't keep a good man down.
- What part of speech is you can't keep a good man down?
- You can't keep a good man down is a proverb.
Words near you can't keep a good man down in the dictionary
- you can't fix stupid
- you can't get a quart into a pint pot
- you can't get something for nothing
- you can't go home again
- you can't judge a book by its cover
- you can't keep a good man down
- you can't live with 'em, you can't live without 'em
- you can't live with them, you can't live without them
- you can't make a silk purse of a sow's ear
- you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs
- you can't make this stuff up
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: you can't keep a good man down (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-you can't keep a good man down.ogg.
Cite this entry: “you can't keep a good man down.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/you_can%27t_keep_a_good_man_down. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.