Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL

Prosperity is no just scale; adversity is the only balance to weigh friends.

Adversity | Balance | Prosperity |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

No man has a prosperity so high or firm, but that two or three words can dishearten it; and there is no calamity which right words will not begin to redress.

Calamity | Man | Prosperity | Right | Will | Words | Calamity |

Robert Burton

A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner; neither do uninterrupted prosperity and success qualify men for usefulness and happiness.

Men | Prosperity | Success | Usefulness |

Solomon, fully King Solomon, aka Jedidiah NULL

There is no wealth greater than the health of the body, there is no joy greater than the joy of the heart... A cheerful heart causes man's life to blossom, while the spirit of sadness dries the bones. Never rejoice at other people's misfortunes, for you cannot know when adversity may come to you.

Adversity | Body | Health | Heart | Joy | Life | Life | Man | People | Sadness | Spirit | Wealth |

Thomas Kempis, aka Thomas à Kempis, Thomas von Kempen, Thomas Haemerkken or Hammerlein or Hemerken or Hämerken

Occasions of adversity best discover how great virtue or strength each one hath. For occasions do not make a man frail, but they show what he is.

Adversity | Man | Strength | Virtue | Virtue |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

It is safe to say that the prosperity of our people depends directly on the energy and intelligence with which our natural resources are used. It is equally clear that these resources are the final basis of national power and perpetuity. Finally, it is ominously evident that these resources are in the course of rapid exhaustion.

Energy | Intelligence | People | Power | Prosperity | Safe |

Thomas Fuller

Prosperity gets Followers, but Adversity distinguishes them.

Adversity | Prosperity |

Thomas Fuller

Prosperity and Vanity are often lodg'd together. Prosperity destroys Fools, endangers the Wise, Prosperity has every Thing cheap. Prosperity knows not the worth of Patience. Prosperity takes no Counsel, and fears no Calamity. Prosperous Men seldom mend their Faults.

Calamity | Counsel | Men | Patience | Prosperity | Wise | Worth |

Thucydides NULL

Mankind apparently find it easier to drive away adversity than to retain prosperity.

Adversity | Mankind | Prosperity |

William Hazlitt

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater.

Adversity | Prosperity |

William Shakespeare

A jest's prosperity lies in the ear Of him that hears it, never in the tongue Of him that makes it. Love's Labour 's Lost. Act v. Sc. 2.

Prosperity |

Wendell Phillips

Society - the only field where the sexes have ever met on terms of equality, the arena where character is formed and studied, the cradle and the realm of public opinion, the crucible of ideas, the world’s university, at once a school and a theater, the spur and the crown of ambition, the tribunal which unmasks pretension and stamps real merit, the power that gives government leave to be, and outruns the lazy Church in fixing the moral sense of the eye.

Ambition | Character | Church | Equality | Government | Ideas | Merit | Opinion | Power | Public | Sense | Society | World | Government |

William Hazlitt

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.

Adversity | Mind | Prosperity |

Chilon of Lacedemon NULL

Be more prompt to go to a friend in adversity than in prosperity.

Adversity | Friend | Prosperity |

Denis E. Waitley

One of the best ways to properly evaluate and adapt to the many environmental stresses of life is to simply view them as normal. The adversity and failures in our lives, if adapted to and viewed as normal corrective feedback to use to get back on target, serve to develop in us an immunity against anxiety, depression, and the adverse responses to stress. Instead of tackling the most important priorities that would make us successful and effective in life, we prefer the path of least resistance and do things simply that will relieve our tension, such as shuffling papers and majoring in minors.

Adversity | Anxiety | Anxiety | Depression | Important | Life | Life | Will |

Felix Adler

No religion can long continue to maintain its purity when the church becomes the subservient vassal of the state.

Church | Purity | Religion |