every dog will have his day

Even the least fortunate person will have success at some point. Don't worry, your experiment will work eventually—every dog will have his day. A: "Greg is an idiot—how could they possibly give him the promotion?" B: "Well, you know what they say—every dog will have his day." Hey, we bid unsuccessfully on 25 houses before getting into this one. Hang in there—every dog will have their day.

Even the lowliest will eventually have their revenge. Erasmus traced this metaphor to a Macedonian proverb about the death of Euripides in 406 b.c. While on a visit to the king of Macedonia, the Greek playwright was attacked and killed by dogs that a rival had set upon him. John Heywood included it in his 1546 proverb collection (“As euery man saith, a dog hatha daie”), and George Bernard Shaw used it as well (“Every dog has his day, and I have had mine,” Caesar and Cleopatra, 1897).