sadder but wiser

Idioms and Phrases

Unhappy but having learned from one's mistakes, as in Sadder but wiser, she's never going near poison ivy again . The pairing of these two adjectives was first recorded in Samuel Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798).

Example Sentences

I even present some statistical evidence for this cycle of unpleasant shocks followed by sadder-but-wiser recoveries.

From The Daily Beast