Use will make a man live in a lion's den.
Custom is second nature.
Cicero says nearly the same thing,[373] and the thought has been happily amplified by Sydney Smith. "There is no degree of disguise or distortion which human nature may not be made to assume from habit; it grows in every direction in which it is trained, and accommodates itself to every circumstance which caprice or design places in its way. It is a plant with such various aptitudes, and such opposite propensities, that it flourishes in a hothouse or the open air; is terrestrial or aquatic, parasitical or independent; looks well in exposed situations, thrives in protected ones; can bear its own luxuriance, admits of amputation; succeeds in perfect liberty, and can be bent down into any forms of art; it is so flexible and ductile, so accommodating and vivacious, that of two methods of managing it—completely opposite—neither the one nor the other need be considered as mistaken and bad. Not that habit can give any new principle; but of those numerous principles which do exist in our nature it entirely determines the order and force."[374]
"Continuance becomes usage" (Italian).[375] Whatever we do often we become more and more apt to do, till at last the propensity to the act becomes irresistible, though the performance of it may have ceased to give any pleasure. In Fielding's "Life of Jonathan Wild" the great thief is represented as playing at cards with the Count, a professed gambler. "Such was the power of habit over the minds of these illustrious persons, that Mr. Wild could not keep his hands out of the Count's pockets, though he knew they were empty; nor could the Count abstain from palming a card, though he was well aware Mr. Wild had no money to pay him." "To change a habit is like death" (Spanish).[376]
Hand in use is father o' lear [learning, skill].—Scotch.
Practice makes perfect.
"By working in the smithy one becomes a smith" (Latin, French).[377] "Use makes the craftsman" (Spanish, German).[378] An emir had bought a left eye of a glassmaker, and was vexed at finding that he could not see with it. The man begged him to give it a little time; he could not expect that it would see all at once so well as the right eye, which had been for so many years in the habit of it. We take this whimsical story from Coleridge, who does not tell us in what Oriental Joe Miller he found it.
No man is his craft's master the first day.
But some people fancy themselves masters born, like "The Portuguese apprentice, who does not know how to sew, and wants to cut out" (Spanish).[379]
You must spoil before you spin.
"One learns by failing" (French).[380] "He that stumbles, if he does not fall, quickens his pace" (Spanish).[381]