Pardon me for being sloppy, and you are right to correct me for I do make mistakes. I often do not tell you when you say things I think are silly or do not make sense for often it is not worth my time or I think it would be mean.

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The idiom that is not really popular enough to be an idiom is.

Whom the gods would destroy... followed by the relevant saying but often it would be

1) they would first make mad / they would first drive mad

2) they would first make proud

3) they would answer their prayers

4) they would first derive of their senses

And so on. Aka an idiom but a messy idiom that is not perfectly quoted but used often in literature but twisted with each tale. This is why I did not include the last part on how the Gods destroyed man, but I was trying to reference the concept of Nemesis and Hubris.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whom_the_gods_would_destroy

Probably the oldest origin of the phrase goes back to the Greek Poet Sophocles in the play Antigone. This makes sense for Sophocles was one of the poets who often write in plays the concept of Nemesis where man out of hubris, pride, arrogance was given a punishment by the gods aka given his due. Also Sophocles in his plays tell tales of lots of tragedies of how many was the own creator of his own destruction.

Now some people attribute similar "Whom the Gods Would Destroy" quote to another Greek poet Euripides but this seems to be misattribution.

The reason why I choose Latin was one of the things I was more familiar is the biography of Samuel Johnson, John Boswell's 1791 The Life of Samuel Johnson where the quote is Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat and I was referencing the part before the comma Quos Deus Vult Perdere. This version of the quote was very popular in the late 1700 and 1800s and it influenced many of people like Edmund Burke.

I am partial for the tale of Epimetheus and Prometheus and Pandora in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "The Masque of Pandora" (1875). (Epimetheus which means Hindsight and Prometheus which means Foresight.)

I am also partial for a version divorced from these other parts in Fullmetal Alchemist. When the Father / Dwarf in the Flask talks to his son Pride he talks about the arrogance of humans who would play god and thus the truth takes from the same arrogance, only for later on the truth repeats Father's own words back to the dwarf in the flask at the end of the series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PRSchbUMW4

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But the part I quote by accident and sloppy was the Oscar Wilde version which is not the original but instead his own spin on it. When the gods seek to punish us, they answer our prayers. Later on Aaron Sorkin converted the Oscar Wilde quote and made it older by saying it is an old Italian saying and he had a jewish guy quote the Italian "Quando dio vuole castigarci, ci manda quello che desideriamo."

Me in a quick google search looking for the latin copy and pasted this italian quote and I did not double check it and thus I quoted the wrong quote (but kind of relevant) and did not double check it. I was going for the Samuel Johnson biography quote, but I was already background familiar with many of the other versions, but those memories were in the back of the mind and far less clear.

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Tom I apologize for being sloppy but also not arising to the audacious goal of "making sense" to the grand Tom. I am sorry to you I only speak non—sense. I am sorry for I sometimes have not one point but multiple points and I mix them up and blend them together, but isn't that merely being human? I guess I do not follow a single path.