Though life is made up of mere bubbles,
'T is better than many aver,
For while we've a whole lot of troubles,
The most of them never occur.

Shreds and Patches, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens", Benjamin Disraeli, Henrietta Temple (1837), Book 2, chapter 4; "I say the very things that make the greatest Stir / An' the most interestin' things, are things that did n't occur", Sam Walter Foss, Things that did n't occur.