This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There be four good mothers who have four bad daughters: Truth hath Hatred, Prosperity hath Pride, Security hath Peril, and Familiarity hath Contempt.
Character | Contempt | Familiarity | Good | Peril | Pride | Prosperity | Security | Truth |
To rejoice in the prosperity of another is to partake of it.
Prosperity | Wisdom |
Eugene P. Bertin, fully Eugene Peter Bertin
Honest work bears a lovely face for it is the father of pleasure and the mother of good fortune. It is the keystone of prosperity and the sire of fame. And best of all, work is relief from sorrow and the handmaiden of happiness.
Fame | Father | Fortune | Good | Mother | Pleasure | Prosperity | Sorrow | Wisdom | Work |
It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted.
Advice | Prosperity | Wisdom |
If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.
Adversity | Prosperity | Taste | Wisdom |
As full ears load and lay down corn, so does too much fortune bend and break the mind. It deserves to be considered, too, as another disadvantage, that affliction moves pity, and reconciles our very enemies, but prosperity provokes envy, and loses us our very friends.
Affliction | Envy | Fortune | Mind | Pity | Prosperity | Wisdom |
Richard Francis Burton, fully Sir Richard Francis Burton
If adversity hath killed his thousands, prosperity hath killed his ten thousands; therefore adversity is to be preferred. The one deceives, the other instructs; the one is miserably happy, the other happily miserable; and therefore many philosophers have voluntarily sought adversity and commend it in their precepts.
Adversity | Happy | Prosperity | Wisdom |
A truth's prosperity is like a jest's; it lies in the ear of him that hears it.
Prosperity | Truth | Wisdom |
In prosperity prepare for a change; in adversity hope for one.
Adversity | Change | Hope | Prosperity | Wisdom |
John W. Daniel, fully John Warwick Daniel
By adversity are wrought the greatest works of admiration, and all the fair examples of renown, out of distress and misery are grown.
Admiration | Adversity | Distress | Wisdom |
He that can heroically endure adversity will bear prosperity with equal greatest of the soul; for the mind that cannot be dejected by the former is not likely to be transported without the latter.