The collection / 10,343 fragments
Explore passages mentioning learn, learning. Topic suggestions use transparent word matching, not scholarly classification. Reviewed editorial meanings may also connect entries to this topic; those assignments are labelled separately from word matching.
Meaning: A lesson that costs something can make its consequences easier to remember. The saying values learning from experience, without requiring costly mistakes or treating every painful experience as an improvement.
Meaning: The mind is compared to ground that needs deliberate cultivation. The saying encourages useful learning and attention, while its corn-and-thistles contrast should not turn rest, disability or a different way of thinking into evidence of a defective character.
Meaning: Ability does not remove the need for guidance and learning. Even a promising beginner benefits from suitable instruction rather than being expected to know how to use their strengths without support.
Meaning: Deeply established habits can seem inseparable from a person. The bone-and-flesh image emphasises persistence, but its word never overstates the point: early patterns can be questioned and changed, and they do not prove an unalterable inherited character.
Meaning: An unpleasant experience can make someone cautious about encountering the same danger again. Their reluctance may reflect what happened before rather than the present situation alone.
Meaning: Easy conditions can make a task seem simpler than it is. The calm sea allows anyone to appear capable at the helm, cautioning against judging skill solely by an occasion that required little adjustment.
Meaning: A person may achieve more than an initial estimate suggests. The apparent contradiction encourages reconsidering a limit, without denying real constraints or demanding that someone exceed a safe and sustainable capacity.
Meaning: Your own mistakes can teach caution, but another person’s experience may offer the same lesson without the same cost. Listen for relevant lessons before repeating an avoidable error.
Meaning: A change of surroundings or routine can bring renewed growth. The pasture image suggests that staying in one place is not always best, without promising that every change will improve things.
Meaning: The saying claims that correcting one person improves many others. It treats a response to a single action as an example that a wider group may notice.
Meaning: Affection can become excessive indulgence when it prevents a child from learning limits or acting independently. The saying questions how care is expressed, rather than suggesting that a child needs less love.
Meaning: The saying demands that children observe quietly without speaking. It expresses an adult preference for obedience, but a modern reading should question that demand: children need opportunities to ask, contribute and report concerns, rather than have silence treated as a virtue.
Meaning: Rushing towards a position or goal can leave someone unprepared for its demands. The sudden fall follows the hasty climb in the saying, warning about the method of progress rather than condemning quick advancement in every case.
Meaning: Advice should recognise the boundaries of the adviser’s knowledge. The cobbler image cautions against extending authority beyond relevant expertise, while leaving room to learn, ask questions and contribute from experience.
Meaning: Repeating a harmful experience can invite reflection on what could be learned from it. The shipwreck comparison asks about a second exposure, but it unfairly assumes control if used to blame people for danger, coercion or circumstances they could not avoid.
Meaning: An early view of a crop may disappoint while a later view encourages hope. May and June contrast stages of development rather than one permanent verdict.
Meaning: The saying compares grain cleared by wind with a soul improved through correction. It makes separation of unwanted material an image of moral change.
Meaning: Seeking thoughtful advice can remain useful even when circumstances change. The saying values counsel as a practice, without proving that an old recommendation stays accurate or that every adviser understands the current situation.
Meaning: Refusing every relevant suggestion can make cooperation harder. The proverb values openness to useful guidance, while its absolute wording should not deny someone help, compel agreement or make any adviser automatically right.
Meaning: Learn the basic steps before attempting a more demanding task. Gradual preparation can help, while the appropriate starting point depends on the learner and the skill involved.
Meaning: Criticism can help refine work that someone else has made. The clothes-brushing comparison gives the critic a supporting role, without assuming every criticism improves the work or that commenting is equivalent to creating it.
Meaning: Repeated practice can become so familiar that it feels natural. Second nature describes that acquired ease, without proving that a habit is good, unchangeable or shared by everyone.
Meaning: Familiarity and repetition can make an activity easier to manage. The word anything exaggerates that benefit, without proving that practice removes every difficulty or that lack of ease shows insufficient effort.
Meaning: The speaker acknowledges that they had not yet developed the judgement now associated with experience. The teeth image is a figurative admission of earlier inexperience, not a claim that age or physical development guarantees wisdom.