World is your oyster

'The world is your oyster' is an idiom that encourages people to believe that there is a world of opportunities just waiting to be exploited for a bright future. The analogy is finding a pearl in an oyster. The oyster is the world and the pearl is the opportunity, but one has to work for it because oysters have to be prised open, and not every oyster contains a pearl. Like so many expressions in the English language, the source is Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor Act II, Scene II. Falstaff refuses to lend money to Pistol who then says, “Why, then the world’s mine oyster, which I will open with a sword.” The idiomatic usage dates from the early 1600s.