The game is not worth the candle
Meaning: Pursuing a goal costs more in effort or money than any benefit you'll actually gain from achieving it.
Origin: A translation of the French le jeu n'en vaut pas la chandelle. In 16th-century France, card players met in rooms lit by costly candles, and a game whose stakes would not even pay for the light was not worth playing. It came into English in John Florio's 1603 translation of Montaigne's Essays.
Equivalents in French, Spanish, and Japanese
- French: Le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle (literally: The game is not worth the candle)
- Spanish: Sale más caro el collar que el perro (literally: The collar costs more than the dog)
- Japanese: 労多くして功少なし (Rō ōkushite kō sukunashi) (literally: Much toil, little merit)
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