Even the richest soil, if left uncultivated will produce the rankest weeds.

Using an agricultural metaphor, the saying argues that natural advantages—talent, intelligence, wealth, or opportunity—do not automatically yield good outcomes. Like fertile ground, they require sustained cultivation: discipline, education, practice, and moral attention. If neglected, the same “richness” can foster harmful growth—bad habits, vice, complacency, or wasted potential—because whatever is left unattended will still develop, just not in the direction one intends. The line functions as a warning against relying on innate gifts and as an endorsement of deliberate self-improvement: excellence is less a possession than a process of continual tending.