Hi, everyone “We’re looking at a couple but they’re not more than a gleam in the eye,” Buffett said of deals that would be “something similar” to Lubrizol. “They’re worth doing but we can’t do a really big elephant now and we won’t stretch when we’ve never really taken any risk because we don’t need to.” Could you please explain the phrase ''they’re not more than a gleam in the eye,". Thanks in advance
As Buffett is quoted as saying in the first part of the sentence, he is "looking at" a couple of deals. The "gleam" suggests that he is looking at them favorably, that they are highly attractive. (He goes on to say that nothing has been decided, because they are also somewhat risky.)
It means that they are currently nothing more than ideas. "A gleam in (the/somebody's) eye" is a set phrase. It refers to something that is still only an idea or a hope. This is from Macmillan dictionary: It might or might not be a generalization from "When you were just a gleam in your father's eye" which humorously refers to your father's desires before you were conceived, to mean in the past before you existed.
