Practice makes perfect.

The proverb states a plain truth: skill comes from repetition, and whoever keeps doing a thing will end by doing it well. Music teachers, coaches and parents use it to answer complaints about scales, drills and homework, and it is often the first proverb children learn.

Older English put it as “Use makes perfect”; “practice” took over the saying and has kept it since. Its relatives abroad show how universal it is: German “Übung macht den Meister”, Spanish “la práctica hace al maestro”, and French, more concretely, “c’est en forgeant qu’on devient forgeron”, it is by forging that one becomes a blacksmith.

The proverb has drawn the obvious objections, that practice makes permanent rather than perfect if you practise your mistakes, and the obvious joke, that nobody is perfect, so why practise. None of this has dented its use. It promises that effort is not wasted, which is what a learner most needs to hear, and it is quoted as readily in sport as in the music room.

English proverb