First creep and then go.
Meaning: Learning basics before advancing prevents failure and wasted effort on complex skills.
Origin: Recorded in A Dictionary of English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, an undated collection published in London by Whittaker & Co. around 1880 and credited to Thomas Preston. Its earlier history hasn't been traced.
More proverbs about Wisdom
- Every cross has its inscription. — Hidden within each hardship lies a specific lesson or purpose meant uniquely for the suff…
- Cut and come again. — Repeated harvesting of regrowth yields multiple yields from a single planting, rewarding…
- No cut like unkindness. — Harsh words wound deeper than any blade because emotional pain leaves invisible but lasti…
- Nothing is surer than death. — Mortality is the one absolute certainty all humans must accept, making it foolish to deny…
- First deserve and then desire. — Merit earned precedes rightful ambition; establish capability before claiming reward.
- Desires are nourished by delays. — Postponing what you want intensifies your craving rather than diminishing it.
From our idioms
- Mettre les bouchées doubles — To work twice as hard in order to catch up.
- La dive bouteille — Wine, treated with mock reverence.
- Boire le calice jusqu'à la lie — To endure an ordeal all the way to its most humiliating end.