“One does not attain everything he wishes for.
Winds blow counter to what the ships desire.”
From the poem Bima At-Taʿallulu http://www.almotanabbi.com/poemPage.do?poemId=272
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Al-Mutanabbi 13
Arabic poet from the Abbasid era 915–965Related quotes

Conquest of Fear, Divine Life Society, http://dlshq.org/download/conquest_fear.pdf (circa 1960)

“As a little skiff attached to a great ship, when the storm blows high, takes in her small share of the raging waters and tosses in the same south wind.”
Immensae veluti conexa carinae
cumba minor, cum saevit hiems, pro parte furentis
parva receptat aquas et eodem volvitur austro.
iv, line 120
Silvae, Book I

As quoted in A Fate Worse than Debt (1988) Susan George.
Attributions

“If invisible people eat invisible food does invisible wind blow invisible trees?”
Source: If You Could See Me Now

“When a man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind.”
errant consilia nostra, quia non habent quo derigantur; ignoranti quem portum petat nullus suus ventus est.
Letter LXXI: On the supreme good, line 3
Alternate translation: If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable. (translator unknown).
Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius)
Context: Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind.

“The wind is blowing, adore the wind.”
Symbol 8
The Symbols