every dog will have its day

Even the least fortunate person will have success at some point. Don't worry, your experiment will work eventually—every dog will have its 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 its day." Hey, we bid unsuccessfully on 25 houses before getting into this one. Hang in there—every dog will have its day.

Everyone will have a moment of glory or the chance for revenge. Andy Warhol's prediction that everyone will have fifteen minutes of fame was the most recent incarnation of this old expression, which has been traced back to the medieval Dutch scholar and theologian Desiderius Erasmus. According to Erasmus, the Greek playwright Euripides was killed by a pack of dogs that a rival set upon him. Shakespeare picked up on the expression in Hamlet: “Let Hercules himself do what he may / The cat will mew and dog will have his day.”