AESOP’S FABLE: THE GOOSE THAT LAID GOLDEN EGGS

Comment:

"The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs" is one of Aesop's Fables, a story that also has a number of Eastern analogues. Many other stories contain geese that lay golden eggs, though certain versions change them for hens or other birds that lay golden eggs. The tale has given rise to the idiom 'killing the goose that lays the golden eggs', which refers to the short-sighted destruction of a valuable resource, or to an unprofitable action motivated by greed.

The fable:

A cottager and his wife had a goose that laid a golden egg every day. They supposed that the goose must contain a great lump of gold in its inside and, in order to get the gold, they killed it. Having done so, they found to their surprise that the goose differed in no respect from their other geese. 

The moral:

Greed is bad: if the man and his wife had not been motivated by avarice, or greed for more gold, they would not have cut open the goose and thus they would not have deprived themselves of a smaller, though regular and steady and reliable, source of income from their special bird.