“Things we hope not for oftener come to pass than things we wish for. (translated by Thornton)”

— Plautus , Mostellaria

Act I, scene 3, line 42.
Variant translation: Things which you do not hope happen more frequently than things which you do hope. (translator unknown)
Mostellaria (The Haunted House)

Original

Insperata accidunt magis saepe quam que speres.

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Plautus 54

Roman comic playwright of the Old Latin period -254–-184 BC

Related quotes

“Keep what you’ve got; the evil that we know is best. (translator Thornton)”
Habeus ut nactus ; nota mala res optima’st.

Plautus Trinummus

Trinummus, Act I, scene 2, lines 25
Trinummus (The Three Coins)

“I love truth, and wish to have it always spoken to me : I hate a liar. (translated by Thornton)”
Ego verum amo, verum vol mihi dici : mendacem odi.

Plautus Mostellaria

Mostellaria, Act I, scene 3, line 26
Mostellaria (The Haunted House)

“Man proposes, God disposes. (translated by Thornton)”
Sperat quidem animus : quo eveniat, diis in manu est

Plautus Bacchides

Bacchides Act I, scene 2, line 36.
Variant translation: The mind is hopeful : success is in God’s hands. (translator unknown)
Bacchides (The Bacchises)

“True instruction is this: —to learn to wish that each thing should come to pass as it does.”

Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece

Golden Sayings of Epictetus
Context: True instruction is this: —to learn to wish that each thing should come to pass as it does. And how does it come to pass? As the Disposer has disposed it. Now He has disposed that there should be summer and winter, and plenty and dearth, and vice and virtue, and all such opposites, for the harmony of the whole. (26).

“The unfortunate thing is that, because wishes sometimes come true, the agony of hoping is perpetuated.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book A Coin in Nine Hands

Le malheur est que, parfois, des souhaits s'accomplissent, afin que se perpétue le supplice de l'espérance.
Denier du rêve (1934), translated as A Coin in Nine Hands (1994) by Dori Katz, Ch. 3, p. 31 ISBN 0-226-96527-9