
“Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.”
Of Adversity
Essays (1625)
Act V, scene vi.
The White Devil (1612)
“Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.”
Of Adversity
Essays (1625)
“Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
Epigrams, Book iv, Epistle 5. Compare: "Prosperum ac felix scelus/ Virtus vocatur" ("Successful and fortunate crime/ is called virtue"), Seneca, Herc. Furens, ii. 250.
Hellenica Bk. 4, as translated by Carleton L. Brownson (1918)
Source: The Night Land (1912), Chapter 7
“The snow covers many a dunghill, so doth prosperity many a rotten heart.”
page 87
Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices, 1652
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).