don't count your chicks before they're hatched

“Oh, well, I just thought, if it is getting that bad with you and Mabel, perhaps I ought to be looking around for a bridesmaid’s outfit.” John laughed a queer, hard laugh. / “Don’t count your chicks before they’re hatched, Sis. We may break off yet, for all you know.”

1926 February, “Her Sacrifice”, in The Grail, volume 7, number 10, Saint Meinrad, Ind., →OCLC, “Maid and Mother” section (conducted by Clare Hampton), page 472, column 1

Hannah saw the smile and warmed to it like the sun. This was how she always wanted to see him—happy, open, and trusting. She sighed. All this for that doomed goose egg. / “Now Jess,” she said softly, “you’d best not be gettin’ your hopes up too high. It’s not for nothin’ they say it, you know: Don’t count your chicks before they’re hatched.”

1985, Clayton Bess, chapter 5, in Big Man and the Burn-out, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Company, →ISBN, page 31

‘We can’t do nothing about it now but we’ll skin him this evening,’ said one of the men. / ‘Yeah,’ said the other. They were both pleased with themselves and with their good fortune. / Renard lying doggo on the baskets just behind them, said nothing but smiled to himself. ‘Don’t count your chicks before they’re hatched, nor your foxes before they’re skinned,’ he thought.

1986, Rachel Anderson, David Bradby, “Renard and the Eels”, in Renard the Fox, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 47