learn by heart = to memorize If you want to learn something by heart, you learn it in small paragraphs or sentences. It helps a lot if you do that and then get somebody to test you sentence by sentence

I think you're asking about how it is to learn by the school of hard knocks. It's a school that you don't need to pay money to go to. There's no fraternity or sorority to join. It's the hits that you take from real life that improve you as a person. In other words, you have got knocked out several times and you learn how to avoid this potential knockout punch again in the future.

" Learning with perfection " is the best answer to your question.

The phrase is "learn by heart"! You learn something so well that you can recite it perfectly.

I'm under the impression that by hard, you meant by hard knocks and not to learn by heart. That's what separates these answers.