We live, not as we wish to, but as we can.

This sentiment is attributed to Menander, the leading playwright of Athenian New Comedy (late 4th–early 3rd century BCE). Much of Menander’s work survives only in fragments and later quotations, and many of his lines circulated in antiquity as standalone maxims (gnomai), often excerpted for moral instruction. The thought fits the ethical, practical tone for which Menander was famous: his comedies frequently portray ordinary people constrained by money, status, family expectations, and circumstance rather than heroic freedom of choice. In later reception, such lines were commonly transmitted through anthologies and collections of Greek sententiae rather than through a securely identified play-text.

Menander’s line expresses a sober, comic-tragic realism: human life is governed less by desire than by constraint. “Wish” stands for ideals—how we would like to live if choice were unlimited—while “can” points to necessity: money, status, law, family obligations, chance, and the limits of character. In New Comedy, such observations often surface amid plots of love, debt, and social pressure, where ordinary people improvise within tight boundaries. The aphorism’s enduring appeal lies in its universality: it can read as resignation, as pragmatic wisdom, or as a prompt to distinguish between fantasies and feasible aims.