"you can't keep a good man down" meaning in English

See you can't keep a good man down in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Proverb

Audio: En-au-you can't keep a good man down.ogg [Australia]
Head templates: {{head|en|proverb|head=}} you can't keep a good man down, {{en-proverb}} you can't keep a good man down
  1. A person who has talent, resolve, or moral strength will eventually succeed despite having been overlooked, injured, or defeated. Translations (person who has talent will succeed): 好人自有出頭之日 (Chinese Mandarin), 好人自有出头之日 (hǎorén zìyǒu chūtóu zhī rì) (Chinese Mandarin), ahkeruus kovankin onnen voittaa (Finnish)
    Sense id: en-you_can't_keep_a_good_man_down-en-proverb-2H~7M09g Categories (other): English proverbs

Download JSON data for you can't keep a good man down meaning in English (3.0kB)

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  "head_templates": [
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      "expansion": "you can't keep a good man down",
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      "expansion": "you can't keep a good man down",
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          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English proverbs",
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1915, P. G. Wodehouse, Concealed Art",
          "text": "\"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?\"\n\"Oh, these things get about,\" I said. \"You can't keep a good man down.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1984 March 26, Richard Corliss, “Cinema: The Master Who Knew Too Much”, in Time, retrieved 2018-01-18",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2000 April 3, Chris Hewett, “Rugby: Running talent will put life into Lions”, in Independent, UK, retrieved 2018-01-18",
          "text": "He cut a sorry figure after the thumping by England, but you can't keep a good man down. That familiar mix of manic energy and piratical lunacy enabled the totemic Irishman to reassert his status as a world-class performer.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2013 January 22, Jack Goodstein, “Music Review: Boyd Lee Dunlop—The Lake Reflections”, in Seattle Post-Intelligencer, retrieved 2018-01-18",
          "text": "Dunlop suffered a coronary arrest—his heart stopped for almost six minutes. But even at 85, you can't keep a good man down, and he was able to recover.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A person who has talent, resolve, or moral strength will eventually succeed despite having been overlooked, injured, or defeated."
      ],
      "id": "en-you_can't_keep_a_good_man_down-en-proverb-2H~7M09g",
      "links": [
        [
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        [
          "resolve",
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        [
          "succeed",
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          "injure",
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          "defeat",
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      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "cmn",
          "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
          "sense": "person who has talent will succeed",
          "word": "好人自有出頭之日"
        },
        {
          "code": "cmn",
          "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
          "roman": "hǎorén zìyǒu chūtóu zhī rì",
          "sense": "person who has talent will succeed",
          "word": "好人自有出头之日"
        },
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "person who has talent will succeed",
          "word": "ahkeruus kovankin onnen voittaa"
        }
      ]
    }
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  "sounds": [
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      "audio": "En-au-you can't keep a good man down.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/b/b1/En-au-you_can%27t_keep_a_good_man_down.ogg/En-au-you_can%27t_keep_a_good_man_down.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/En-au-you_can%27t_keep_a_good_man_down.ogg",
      "tags": [
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  "word": "you can't keep a good man down"
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "proverb",
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        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1915, P. G. Wodehouse, Concealed Art",
          "text": "\"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?\"\n\"Oh, these things get about,\" I said. \"You can't keep a good man down.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1984 March 26, Richard Corliss, “Cinema: The Master Who Knew Too Much”, in Time, retrieved 2018-01-18",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2000 April 3, Chris Hewett, “Rugby: Running talent will put life into Lions”, in Independent, UK, retrieved 2018-01-18",
          "text": "He cut a sorry figure after the thumping by England, but you can't keep a good man down. That familiar mix of manic energy and piratical lunacy enabled the totemic Irishman to reassert his status as a world-class performer.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2013 January 22, Jack Goodstein, “Music Review: Boyd Lee Dunlop—The Lake Reflections”, in Seattle Post-Intelligencer, retrieved 2018-01-18",
          "text": "Dunlop suffered a coronary arrest—his heart stopped for almost six minutes. But even at 85, you can't keep a good man down, and he was able to recover.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
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        "A person who has talent, resolve, or moral strength will eventually succeed despite having been overlooked, injured, or defeated."
      ],
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        [
          "resolve",
          "resolve"
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        [
          "succeed",
          "succeed"
        ],
        [
          "overlook",
          "overlook"
        ],
        [
          "injure",
          "injure"
        ],
        [
          "defeat",
          "defeat"
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      "tags": [
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  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "cmn",
      "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
      "sense": "person who has talent will succeed",
      "word": "好人自有出頭之日"
    },
    {
      "code": "cmn",
      "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
      "roman": "hǎorén zìyǒu chūtóu zhī rì",
      "sense": "person who has talent will succeed",
      "word": "好人自有出头之日"
    },
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "person who has talent will succeed",
      "word": "ahkeruus kovankin onnen voittaa"
    }
  ],
  "word": "you can't keep a good man down"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-17 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-01 using wiktextract (0b52755 and 5cb0836). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.