Ian Fleming quote: “Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make bored.”

“Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.”

Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

Anonymous ancient proverb, wrongly attributed to Euripides. The version here is quoted as a "heathen proverb" in Daniel, a Model for Young Men (1854) by William Anderson Scott. The origin of the misattribution to Euripides is unknown. Several variants are quoted in ancient texts, as follows. Variants and derived paraphrases: For cunningly of old was the celebrated saying revealed: evil sometimes seems good to a man whose mind a god leads to destruction. Sophocles, Antigone 620-3, a play pre-dating any of Euripides' surviving plays. An ancient commentary explains the passage as a paraphrase of the following, from another, earlier poet. When a god plans harm against a man, he first damages the mind of the man he is plotting against. Quoted in the scholia vetera to Sophocles' Antigone 620ff., without attribution. The meter (iambic trimeter) suggests that the source of the quotation is a tragic play. For whenever the anger of divine spirits harms someone, it first does this: it steals away his mind and good sense, and turns his thought to foolishness, so that he should know nothing of his mistakes. Attributed to "some of the old poets" by Lycurgus of Athens in his Oratio In Leocratem [Oration Against Leocrates], section 92. Again, the meter suggests that the source is a tragic play. These lines are misattributed to the much earlier semi-mythical statesman Lycurgus of Sparta in a footnote of recent editions of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations and other works. The gods do nothing until they have blinded the minds of the wicked. Variant in 'Dictionary of Quotations (Classical) (1906), compiled by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 433. Whom Fortune wishes to destroy she first makes mad. Publilius Syrus, Maxim 911 The devil when he purports any evil against man, first perverts his mind. As quoted by Athenagoras of Athens [citation needed] quem Iuppiter vult perdere, dementat prius. "Whom Jupiter wishes to destroy, he first sends mad"; neo-Latin version. Similar wording is found in James Duport's Homeri Gnomologia (1660), p. 234. "A maxim of obscure origin which may have been invented in Cambridge about 1640" -- Taylor, The Proverb (1931). Probably a variant of the line "He whom the gods love dies young", derived from Menander's play The Double Deceiver via Plautus (Bacchides 816-7). quem (or quos) Deus perdere vult, dementat prius. Whom God wishes to destroy, he first sends mad. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. This variant is spoken by Prometheus, in The Masque of Pandora (1875) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. As quoted in George Fox Interpreted: The Religion, Revelations, Motives and Mission of George Fox (1881) by Thomas Ellwood Longshore, p. 154 Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad. As quoted in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations 16th edition (1992) Nor do the gods appear in warrior's armour clad To strike them down with sword and spear Those whom they would destroy They first make mad. Bhartṛhari, 7th c. AD; as quoted in John Brough,Poems from the Sanskrit, (1968), p, 67 vināśakāle viparītabuddhiḥ Sanskrit Saying (also in Jatak katha): "When a man is to be destroyed, his intelligence becomes self-destructive." Modern derivatives: The proverb's meaning is changed in many English versions from the 20th and 21st centuries that start with the proverb's first half (through "they") and then end with a phrase that replaces "first make mad" or "make mad." Such versions can be found at Internet search engines by using either of the two keyword phrases that are on Page 2 and Page 4 of the webpage " Pick any Wrong Card http://www.bu.edu/av/celop2/not_ESL/pick_any_wrong_card.pdf." The rest of that webpage is frameworks that induce a reader to compose new variations on this proverb. Misattributed

“Whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first call promising.”

Cyril Connolly book Enemies of Promise

Source: Enemies of Promise (1938), Part 2: The Charlock’s Shade, Ch. 13: The Poppies (p. 109-110)
Context: Whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first call promising.
Young writers if they are to mature require a period of between three and seven years in which to live down their promise. Promise is like the mediaeval hangman who after settling the noose, pushed his victim off the platform and jumped on his back, his weight acting a drop while his jockeying arms prevented the unfortunate from loosening the rope. When he judged him dead he dropped to the ground.

“Whom Fortune wishes to destroy she first makes mad.”
Stultum facit fortuna, quem vult perdere.

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 911; one of the most famous renditions of the ancient Greek proverb (which is anonymous and dates to the 5th century BCE or earlier). The provenance of the proverb and its English versions is at Wikiquote's Euripides page, under the heading "Misattributed".
Sentences

“For those whom God to ruin has design'd,
He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind.”

John Dryden book The Hind and the Panther

Pt. III, line 2387.
The Hind and the Panther (1687)

“Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependents, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant-descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

The 'Rivers of Blood' speech

“We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those whom we bore.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Nous pardonnons souvent à ceux qui nous ennuient, mais nous ne pouvons pardonner à ceux que nous ennuyons.
Maxim 304.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)