English equivalent for a Portuguese saying on “bad company”

In Brazilian Portuguese, we have:

"The bird who goes around with a bat wakes up hanging upside down"

^{Original: "Passarinho que anda com morcego amanhece de cabeça pra baixo"}

The literal meaning is that the bat is a bad company (the kind our mothers warn about) and the bird will wake up like a bat, hanging on a branch upside down.

I suspect this kind of humour is more prone to happen in the "New World" than in the old Europe, but maybe all English-speaking people share a similar expression. If not, which expression(s) could be globally understood?

Solution 1:

I’m not quite sure what you’re looking for, but perhaps one of these suits:

• Bad company corrupts good morals/manners/character.
• You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.

Solution 2:

Dogs and fleas would be my first response, but I would also suggest:

"Better to be alone than in bad company,"

This is often mistakenly attributed to George Washington, but he was not its originator. Rather, he learned it (and likely later popularized it) when at age 16 he copied by hand a book called 110 rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation which stated the expression more fully as

"Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for tis better to be alone than in bad company."

This book was in turn based on a 1640 English translation of a French Jesuit publication of 1595

As far as the global reach of this expression, I personally hear it only very occasionally in English, but much more frequently in Spanish:

"Mejor solo que mal acompañado"