
“As you cannot do what you want,
Want what you can do”
2017 Maps of Meaning 11: The Flood and the Tower. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4fjSrVCDvA
Maps of Meaning
“As you cannot do what you want,
Want what you can do”
Source: Dreamsnake (1978), Chapter 9 (p. 205)
“Do what you have to do, to do what you want to do.”
Variant: Do what you gotta do so you can do what you wanna do.
“If you can't do what you want, do what you can.”
Vorkosigan Saga, Memory (1996)
Variant: When you can't get what you want, you take what you can get.
Source: Miles Errant
“Buy not what you want, but what you have need of; what you do not want is dear at a farthing.”
Emas non quod opus est, sed quod necesse est. Quod non opus est, asse carum est.
As quoted by Seneca (Epistles, 94)
“Sometimes to get what you want the most, you have to do what you want the least.”
Variant: well, sometimes to get what you want the most, you have to do what you want the least.
Source: My Sister's Keeper