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ssss1 Si jeunesse savait! si vieillesse pouvait!

ssss1

What's bred in the bone will never be out of the flesh.

What is innate is not to be eradicated by force of education or self-discipline: these may modify the outward manifestations of a man's nature, but not transmute that nature itself. What belongs to it "lasts to the grave" (Italian).ssss1 The ancients had several proverbs to the same purpose, such as this one, which is found in Aristophanes—"You will never make a crab walk straight forwards"—and this Latin one, which is repeated in several modern languages: "The wolf changes his coat, but not his disposition;"ssss1—he turns grey with age. The Spaniards say he "loses his teeth, but not his inclinations."ssss1 "What is sucked in with the mother's milk runs out in the shroud" (Spanish).ssss1 Horace's well-known line,—

"Naturam expellas furca tamen usque recurret"—

"Though you cast out nature with a fork, it will still return"—has very much the air of a proverb versified. The same thought is better expressed in a French line which has acquired proverbial currency:—