EXPERIENCE.
Bought wit is best.
Wit once bought is worth twice taught.
Hang a dog on a crabtree, and he'll never love verjuice.
A burnt child dreads the fire.
Fear is so imaginative that it starts even at the ghost of a remembered danger. "A scalded dog dreads cold water" (French, Italian, Spanish).[555] "A dog which has been beaten with a stick is afraid of its shadow" (Italian).[556] "Whom a serpent has bitten, a lizard alarms" (Italian).[557] "One who has been bitten by a serpent is afraid of a rope" (Hebrew). "The man who has been beaten with a firebrand runs away at the sight of a firefly" (Cingalese). "He that has been wrecked shudders even at still water" (Ovid).[558]
Experience is the mistress of fools.
She keeps a dear school, says Poor Richard; but fools will learn in no other, and scarce in that. "An ass does not stumble twice over the same stone" (French).[559] "Unfairly does he blame Neptune who suffers shipwreck a second time" (Publius Syrus).[560]
He that will not be ruled by the rudder must be ruled by the rock.—Cornish.
Better learn frae your neebor's scathe than frae your ain.—Scotch.
Wise men learn by others' harms, fools by their own, like Epimetheus, the Greek personification of after-wit.[561] "Happy he who is made wary by others' perils" (Latin).[562]
Old birds are not to be caught with chaff.
"Old crows are hard to catch" (German).[563] "New nets don't catch old birds" (Italian).[564]