life lesson
English
[edit]Alternative forms
[edit]Noun
[edit]life lesson (plural life lessons)
- (set phrase) Advice from another person or information derived from experience that provides valuable long-term guidance for one's future decisions and conduct in life.
- 1872, T. S. Arthur, chapter 1, in Cast Adrift:
- The mother . . . had high views for her daughter. . . . [A]bove them stood many millionaire families, living in palace-homes, and through her daughter she meant to rise into one of them. It mattered not for the personal quality of the scion of the house; he might be as coarse and common as his father before him, or weak, mean, selfish, and debased by sensual indulgence. This was of little account. To lift Edith to the higher social level was the all in all of Mrs. Dinneford's ambition.
But Mr. Dinneford taught Edith a nobler life-lesson than this, gave her better views of wedlock, pictured for her loving heart the bliss of a true marriage, sighing often as he did so.
- 1995 November 27, Mark Landler, “Time Warner Wins a Tug-of-War”, in New York Times, retrieved 26 March 2018:
- However warm her feelings for Elektra, Ms. Rhone said the five months since Mr. Morris's departure had been the roughest time in her career. . . . "This was a life lesson for me," she said. "I just wish it didn't have to happen the way it did."
- 2011 July 18, Jeff Kinney, “Kid Lit Unbound: Who's to say which books are good for children?”, in Time, retrieved 26 March 2018:
- [H]ad I known I was writing for children, I would have written differently — and less honestly. I would have been tempted to write down to kids and use my standing as an adult to impart some sort of life lesson. And that approach never would have worked.