“Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.”
Francis Bacon book Essays
Of Adversity
Essays (1625)
Act V, scene vi.
The White Devil (1612)
“Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.”
Francis Bacon book Essays
Of Adversity
Essays (1625)
“Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
John Harington (writer) (1560–1612) English courtier and author
Epigrams, Book iv, Epistle 5. Compare: "Prosperum ac felix scelus/ Virtus vocatur" ("Successful and fortunate crime/ is called virtue"), Seneca, Herc. Furens, ii. 250.
Xenophon (-430–-354 BC) ancient Greek historian and philosopher
Hellenica Bk. 4, as translated by Carleton L. Brownson (1918)
William Hope Hodgson book The Night Land
Source: The Night Land (1912), Chapter 7
“The snow covers many a dunghill, so doth prosperity many a rotten heart.”
Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan
page 87
Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices, 1652
Isaac de Benserade (1613–1691) French writer
Théâtre des ris et des pleurs
Lit! où je nais, et où je meurs,
Tu nous fais voir comment voisins
Sont nos plaisirs et chagrins.
Translated by Samuel Johnson, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).