When the sun shineth, make hay.

John Heywood (c. 1497–c. 1580) was an English playwright and collector of proverbs active in Tudor England. The saying “When the sun shineth, make hay” belongs to the agrarian world that underlies many of his proverbial expressions: haymaking depended on brief spells of dry weather, so farmers had to work quickly when conditions were favorable. Heywood popularized numerous English proverbs in print, especially through his mid-16th-century collections, helping fix them in recognizable forms for later readers. This line is an early attestation of a proverb that continued to circulate widely in English, later becoming the familiar “Make hay while the sun shines.”

The proverb urges timely action: when circumstances are favorable, one should seize the opportunity rather than delay. Its literal image—cutting and drying grass into hay before rain spoils it—captures the fragility of good conditions and the cost of procrastination. In a broader moral and practical sense, it recommends preparedness, industry, and alertness to changing fortune. The saying’s endurance reflects how easily the agricultural metaphor generalizes to work, finance, politics, and personal life: success often depends less on constant advantage than on recognizing brief windows when effort will yield the greatest return.

Make hay while the sun shines.
When the sun shines, make hay.
While the sun shines, make hay.