Brewer's: Swans ... Geese

All your swans are geese. All your fine promises or expectations have proved fallacious. “Hope told a flattering tale.” The converse, All your geese are swans, means all your children are paragons, and whatever you do is in your own eyes superlative work.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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