The fool learns by suffering. — Hesiod · Skopia

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Poem · Didactic poem

The fool learns by suffering.

In the original Greek

παθὼν δέ τε νήπιος ἔγνω.

Works and Days · 700 BC

★ 2.2

Other tags relating to this quote

Topic

Learning from suffering School of hard knocks Fools

Genre

Medium

Time

700 BC Classical antiquity

Person

Provenance

Current citation

Hesiod. "Works and Days." Theogony and Works and Days, translated by M. L. West. Oxford University Press, 2009, l. 218.

Original citation

Hesiod. Ἔργα καὶ Ἡμέραι [Works and Days]. c. 700 BC, l. 218.

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Sorrow comes in great waves—no one can know that better than you—but it rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us it leaves us on the spot, and we know that if it is strong we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain. It wears us, uses us, but we wear it and use it in return; and it is blind, whereas we after a manner see.

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There is not a woman in the world the possession of whom is as precious as that of the truths which she reveals to us by causing us to suffer.

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Between us and excellence, the gods have placed the sweat of our brows.

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