Manum de tabula

Desist, leave off correcting and amending, «Nimia cura detent magis quam emendat», too much care may injure instead of improving your work. You should therefore let well alone. Apelles, seeing Protogenes with too much care and anxiety, labouring to give a complete finishing to a picture, which he had already made extremely beautiful, fearful lest by such frequent touching, and retouching, he should diminish, instead of heightening its value, cried out "manum de tabula". The adage is of extensive application, being referable to every kind of work, among others, to this of explaining proverbs, which too much labour, instead of elucidating, may render obscure.