“Have your cake and eat it”in other languages

Same idea, different pictures

Each language picks something you can't keep and use up at the same time. English has the cake you can't both eat and still have. French wants the butter and the money from selling it (a cheekier long version adds the dairy woman too). Italian wants a full barrel and a wife who's drunk from it.

The English saying was already in use in the 1500s: John Heywood's 1546 collection of proverbs asks “wolde ye bothe eate your cake, and haue your cake?”