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The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs (173 page)

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, experience is the beginning of knowledge.
1539
Garden of Wisdom
II. 24
V
This be commonly true, for experience is mother of prudence, yet suche prudence & wysedom cost the comon weale moch.
a
1547
Chronicle
(1548) Rich. III 31
He by the longe and often alternate proof .. had gotten by greate experience the very mother and mastres of wisedome.
1581
tr.
S.Guazzo's Civil Conversation
I. 11
Experience is the father of wisedom, and memorie the mother.
1788
American Museum
III. 183
If it be true, that experience is the mother of wisdom, history must be an improving teacher.
1981
Xanadu Talisman
ii.
Experience is the father of wisdom, remember.
experience
;
wisdom
EXPERIENCE keeps a dear school
1743
Poor Richard's Almanack
(Dec.)
Experience keeps a dear school, but Fools will learn in no other.
1897
Story of British Army
vii.
But the British leaders were to learn the fact, they might have foreseen, in the ‘only school fools learn in, that of experience’.
1938
tr.
W. Frischauer's Twilight in Vienna
vii.
The various Governments had .. to learn their lesson in blood and tears, for ‘experience keeps a dear school’.
1989
Washington Post
19 June B2
You're a fool, that's what you are, and as the man said: Experience keeps a dear school but fools will learn in no other.
experience
EXTREMES meet
Opposite extremes have much in common. Cf.
a
1662
PASCAL
Pensées
(new ed., 1835) I.iv.
les extrèmes se touchent
, extremes meet.
1762
in
Collections of New York Hist. Society
(1928) LXII. 48
But as extremes meet we may possibly the sooner have a peace for it.
1822
Nigel
III. iii.
This Olifaunt is a Puritan?—not the less like to be a Papist .. for extremities meet.
1836
Rattlin the Reefer
I. xiv.
Let us place at least one ‘barring out’ [i.e. action of schoolboys barricading themselves in a room] upon record, in order to let the radicals see, and seeing hope, when they find how nearly extremes meet, what a slight step there is from absolute despotism to absolute disorganization.
1905
Line of Love
vi.
It is a venerable saying that extremes meet.
1931
Meaning of Art
II. lxi.
It is a case of extremes meeting, but it may be suggested that extremes meet always on common ground.
1978
Economist
16 Dec. 22
Groups of the extreme left and extreme right are each other's total opposites and avowed enemies. But in some respects these extremes meet.
human nature
;
opposites
BOOK: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs
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