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It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you.
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“It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you.”

O. Henry

Source
The Ransom of Red Chief
Date
1907
Meaning

Meaning of “It looked like a good thing: but wait…”

The narrator signals immediately that a scheme which appeared profitable will become a comic disaster, making hindsight part of the joke before the plot unfolds.

Source context

Where does it come from?

“The Ransom of Red Chief,” represented in Project Gutenberg #1595. The first-person narrator introduces the kidnappers’ scheme with comic foreshadowing; the story satirizes their criminal plan rather than endorsing it.

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DecisionDeepFunnyLifeLife AdviceLife LessonsShortThought-Provoking Quotes That Invite ReflectionMistakes
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Happy is the man who learns from the misfortunes of others.
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“Happy is the man who learns from the misfortunes of others.”

Aesop · Aesop’s Fables — The Lion, the Fox, and the Ass · Townsend translation
Meaning & context

Other people’s failures can become instruction when we pay attention to consequences before repeating the same mistake ourselves.

Source details

Moral printed after “The Lion, the Fox, and the Ass”; the fox changes his conduct after observing the ass’s fate.

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What female heart can gold despise? What cat's averse to fish?
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“What female heart can gold despise? What cat's averse to fish?”

Thomas Gray · Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes · 1748
Meaning & context

Gray humorously gives the cat both human vanity and animal appetite, using the joke to set up a mock-moral warning about attractive things that conceal danger.

Source details

“Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes,” represented in Project Gutenberg #11254. The poem is comic mock-moral verse about Horace Walpole’s cat Selima; the gendered eighteenth-century joke remains historical literary language rather than a modern claim about women.

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It is never too late to be wise;
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“It is never too late to be wise;”

Daniel Defoe · Robinson Crusoe · 1719
Meaning & context

Crusoe reflects that judgment can improve even after years of mistakes, using later experience to reinterpret earlier choices and warnings he once ignored.

Source details

Robinson Crusoe, represented by Project Gutenberg #38705. Crusoe says this while reflecting on what he interprets as secret intimations of Providence; the sentence is fictional first-person religious reflection, not evidence for supernatural guidance.

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I am not young enough to know everything.
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“I am not young enough to know everything.”

J. M. Barrie · The Admirable Crichton · 1902
Meaning & context

Barrie reverses the cliché that age brings complete wisdom, making youthful certainty—not age—the comic claim to omniscience.

Source details

The Admirable Crichton, Act I, Project Gutenberg #3490. Ernest Woolley repeatedly delivers “I am not young enough to know everything” as a self-consciously clever epigram while Agatha, Treherne and the others struggle to understand it; Crichton later says he has no idea what Ernest meant. It remains fictional comic dialogue rather than J. M. Barrie autobiography or a factual claim about age and knowledge.

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A hasty judgement is a first step to a recantation.
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“A hasty judgement is a first step to a recantation.”

Publilius Syrus · The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus · 1856 translation
Meaning & context

Rushing to a conclusion increases the chance that later evidence will force an embarrassing or costly reversal.

Source details

The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, maxim 8, in Darius Lyman’s 1856 English rendering; maxim order can vary across editions.

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I saw the cloud, though I did not foresee the storm.
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“I saw the cloud, though I did not foresee the storm.”

Daniel Defoe · Moll Flanders · 1722
Meaning & context

Moll recognizes warning signs in the household’s changing treatment of her but admits she did not understand how serious the coming consequences would become.

Source details

Moll Flanders, Project Gutenberg #370. The fictional first-person narrator uses weather metaphor while recalling an early relationship crisis and the family’s growing hostility toward her.