The pitcher does not go so often to the water, but it comes home broken at last.

Understand the thought

Meaning in plain English

Repeated exposure to a risk can eventually end badly, even when earlier attempts succeeded. The pitcher image warns against treating a run of safe outcomes as a guarantee that the same action will remain safe.

What the words are saying

The pitcher returns to the water repeatedly until one journey ends with it broken. The image challenges confidence built only on having escaped a bad outcome before. Someone may repeat an avoidable risk and take each uneventful result as proof that precautions are unnecessary. The proverb warns that this reasoning overlooks the possibility of failure on another occasion. Its dramatic ending is not a mathematical prediction that every repeated activity must fail. Frequency, conditions and safeguards still matter. The useful question asks whether the action has an avoidable vulnerability and what evidence, beyond past luck, supports continuing it.

Everyday example

A volunteer has carried a loose display case without securing its lid several times, then decides to fasten it before the next move rather than relying on previous success.

When to use it

Use it when past escapes are being used to dismiss a recurring, avoidable risk.

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Agent-assisted editorial interpretation. This explains the words; it does not by itself verify their author or earliest origin.