life-lesson

Noun

life lesson (plural life lessons)

1. (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.
   • 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...1872, T. S. Arthur, chapter 1, in Cast Adrift