Do not count your chickens before they are hatched.
If you wish me well, do not stand pitying me, but lend me some succour as fast as you can; for pity is but cold comfort when one is up to the chin in water, and within a hair's breadth of starving or drowning.
It is easy to despise what you cannot get
Much wants more and loses all.
We can easily represent things as we wish them to be.
Better to learn wisdom from other people's misfortunes than from your own.