A dictionary of Proverbs (Oxford Paperback Reference)

The PITCHER will go to the well once too often
A warning against pushing one’s luck too far. Cf. early 14th-cent. Fr. tant va pot a eve qu’il brise, the pot goes so often to the water that it breaks.

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  1340 Ayenbite of Inwit (EETS) 206 Zuo longe geth thet pot to the wetere: thet hit comth to-broke hom. 1584 j. WITHALS Dict. (rev. ed.) Bl So oft goeth the pitcher to the well, that at last it commeth broken home. 1777 N. SHAW Collections of New London County Hist. Society (1933) I. 223 I shall send down what I have, but dont you think the Pitcher will go to the well once too often? 1880 Church Times 30 Apr. 275 Some of Mr. Gladstone’s feats in the way of sweeping obstacles out of his path have been wonderful; but the proverb tells us that the pitcher which goes oft to the well will be broken at last. 1996 ‘C. AIRD’ After Effects xvi. 187 Superintendent Leeyes would have to be disturbed on a Saturday all over again. And it was odds on that he wouldn’t like it. That quotation about the pitcher going to the well once too often had more than a ring of truth to it as far as the superintendent was concerned. ■ misfortune; persistence
  

pitcher see also LITTLE pitchers have large ears.
pitchfork see you can DRIVE out Nature with a pitchfork, but she keeps on coming back.
pitied see BETTER be envied than pitied.
PITY is akin to love

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  1601 SHAKESPEARE Twelfth Night III. i. 119 I pity you.—That’s a degree to love. 1696 T. SOUTHERNE Oroonoko II. i. Do, pity me: Pity’s a-kin to Love. a 1895 F. LOCKER-LAMPSON My Confidences (1896) 95 They say that Pity is akin to Love, though only a Poor Relation; but Amy did not even pity me. 1942 ‘C. KINGSTON’ Murder Tunes In (1943) iii. 44 ‘It may not be love—it may be only pity.’ ‘You’re wrong,’ said Mrs. Armitage with the cheerfulness of one discussing something exceedingly pleasurable. ‘It’s not the pity that is akin to love—it’s love itself.’ “love; pity