We poison our lives with fear of burglary and shipwreck, and, ask anyone, the house is never burgled, and the ship never goes down.

Anouilh’s line targets the self-inflicted misery of anticipatory anxiety: we “poison” the present by rehearsing catastrophes that usually never occur. The paired images—burglary (domestic insecurity) and shipwreck (existential disaster)—suggest how fear ranges from everyday worries to life-altering dread, yet functions similarly by colonizing attention. The point is not that misfortune is impossible, but that living as if it were imminent exacts a certain cost: it turns ordinary life into a defensive posture and replaces experience with vigilance. The aphorism thus aligns with a stoic or existential ethic of refusing to let imagined futures dictate one’s current freedom.