The Goose and the Golden Eggs
One golden egg a day. Why would anyone want more?
B2 · C1 · idiom: to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs
The story
There was once a farmer who owned a goose. An ordinary-looking goose — nothing special to look at.
But one morning, he went out to the barn, and there in the nest, beneath the goose, he found an egg made of solid gold.
He could hardly believe it. He held it up to the light. Real gold. He took it to the market, sold it, and came home richer than he had been the day before.
The next morning — another golden egg. And the morning after that, another. Every single day, the goose laid one perfect egg of gold. The farmer sold them one by one, and slowly, steadily, he grew rich.
But as the weeks passed, something changed in him. One egg a day was no longer enough. He began to feel impatient. He began to feel greedy.
"Why should I wait?" he thought. "One egg a day — it's so slow. There must be a whole pile of gold inside that goose. Why take it a little at a time, when I could have all of it at once?"
So he made a decision.
He took the goose, and he cut it open, certain he would find it full of treasure.
But inside, the goose was just a goose. There was no pile of gold. There was nothing.
And now the goose was dead. There would be no egg the next morning. No egg ever again. In his hurry to have everything at once, the farmer had destroyed the very thing that was making him rich.
“And the lesson is this: greed for everything, right now, often costs you the steady thing you already had.”
Words worth keeping
steadily — slowly and regularly, little by little. "The business grew steadily over the years."
greedy — wanting much more than you need, especially money. "He got greedy and lost it all."
to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs — the idiom from this story: to destroy the thing that gives you a steady benefit, usually by being greedy or impatient.
Test yourself
Five quick questions on The Goose and the Golden Eggs.
Before you go
This one happens in real life all the time — a person, a job, a business that gives you something good and steady, and someone gets impatient and ruins it for a quick win. Have you ever seen someone kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?
Tell me in the comments on YouTube