“Men have no greater enemy than excessive prosperity, for it destroys their mastery over themselves and makes them licentious and vicious, with a hankering after novelties destructive of their own well-being.”
Non hanno gli huomini maggior nimico che la troppa prosperità, perchè gli fa impotenti di se medesimi, licentiosi et arditi al male, e cupidi di turbare il ben proprio con cose nuove.
CCLXI.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 376.
Concetti Politici (1578)
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Francesco Sansovino 2
Italian writer 1521–1583Related quotes

IV, 3
Variant translation: The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave, and not the slave of a single man, but — what is worse — the slave of as many masters as he has vices.
The City of God (early 400s)
Context: The dominion of bad men is hurtful chiefly to themselves who rule, for they destroy their own souls by greater license in wickedness; while those who are put under them in service are not hurt except by their own iniquity. For to the just all the evils imposed on them by unjust rulers are not the punishment of crime, but the test of virtue. Therefore the good man, although he is a slave, is free; but the bad man, even if he reigns, is a slave, and that not of one man, but, what is far more grievous, of as many masters as he has vices; of which vices when the divine Scripture treats, it says, “For of whom any man is overcome, to the same he is also the bond-slave.”

Source: Battlefield of the Mind: Winning the Battle in Your Mind

“It is the misfortune of small, precise men always to hanker after large and flamboyant women.”
The Labours of Hercules (1967)

As quoted in "The best quotes from Ralph Klein’s colourful public life" http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-best-quotes-from-ralph-kleins-colourful-public-life/article10577310/, The Globe and Mail
p. 96
Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)