This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Happiness... must be some form of contemplation. But, being a man, one will also need external prosperity; for our nature is not self-sufficient for the purpose of contemplation, but our body also must be healthy and must have food and other attention. Still, we must not think that the man who is to be happy will need many things or great things... for self-sufficiency and action do not involve excess, and we do noble acts without ruling earth and sea." - Aristotle NULL
"Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods; even rich men and those in possession of office and of dominating power are thought to need friends most of all; for what is the use of such prosperity without the opportunity of beneficence, which is exercised chiefly and in its most laudable form towards friends?... With friends men are more able both to think and to act." - Aristotle NULL
"Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity." - Aristotle NULL
"Happiness seems to require a modicum of external prosperity." - Aristotle NULL
"Happiness [is] prosperity combined with virtue." - Aristotle NULL
"Memory tempers prosperity, consoles adversity, cautions youth, and delights old age." - Author Unknown NULL
"Prosperity makes friends and adversity tries them." - Author Unknown NULL
"Pray not for material prosperity: a partition rises when the material is introduced into the spiritual." - Baal Shem Tov, given name Yisroel ben Eliezer
"In prosperity prepare for adversity. It is both wiser and easier to collect winter stores in summer." - Baltasar Gracián
"One who was abhorred by all in prosperity is adored by all in adversity." - Baltasar Gracián
"Industry is the soul of business and the keystone of prosperity." - Charles Dickens, fully Charles John Huffam Dickens
"He that swells in prosperity will be sure to shrink in adversity." - Charles Caleb Colton
"Envy, if surrounded on all sides by the brightness of another’s prosperity, like the scorpion confined within a circle of fire, will sting itself to death." - Charles Caleb Colton
"Put not your trust in prosperity." - Claudian, latin Claudius Claudianus NULL
"When prosperity comes, do not use all of it." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"Prosperity is the touchstone of virtue: it is less difficult to bear misfortunes than to remain uncorrupted by pleasure." - Tacitus, fully Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus NULL
"Even though a high IQ is no guarantee of prosperity, prestige, or happiness in life, our schools and our culture fixate on academic abilities, ignoring the emotional intelligence that also matters immensely for our personal destiny." - Daniel Goleman
"In prosperity friends do not leave you unless desired, whereas in adversity they stay away of their own accord." - Demetrius of Phalerum NULL
"In prosperity, caution; in adversity, patience." - Dutch Proverbs
"Prosperity lets go the bridle." - English Proverbs
"If virtue promises happiness, prosperity and peace, then progress in virtue is progress in each of these; for to whatever point the perfection of anything brings us, progress is always an approach toward it." - Epictetus "the Stoic" NULL
"The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool." - Epicurus NULL
"The Virtue of Prosperity is Temperance; the Virtue of Adversity is Fortitude: which in Morals is the more Heroical Virtue." - Francis Bacon
"Prosperity is not without fears and distaste; and adversity is not without comforts and hope." - Francis Bacon
"To speak in a mean, the virtue of prosperity is temperance, the virtue of adversity is fortitude, which in morals is the more heroic virtue." - Francis Bacon
"Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue." - Francis Bacon
"Prosperity lets go the bridle." - George Herbert
"Both houses of Congress have, by their joint Committee, requested me “To recommend to the People of the United States, a Day of Public Thanksgiving and Prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful Hearts the many Signal Favours of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a Form of Government for their Safety and Happiness”... That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks for his kind Care and Protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation; for the signal and manifold Mercies, and the favourable Interpositions of his Providence in the Course & Conclusion of the late War; for the great Degree of Tranquillity, Union, and Plenty, which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational Manner in which we have been enabled to establish Constitutions of Government for our Safety and Happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious Liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general, for all the great and various Favours which he hath been pleased to confer upon us... to enable us all, whether in public or private Stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually... to promote the Knowledge and Practice of true Religion and Virtue, and the increase of Science among them and us; and generally to grant unto all mankind such a Degree of temporal Prosperity as He alone knows to be best." - George Washington
"Freedom is not a luxury that we can indulge in when at last we have security and prosperity and enlightenment; it is, rather, antecedent to all of these, for without it we can have neither security nor prosperity nor enlightenment." - Henry Steele Commager
"A helping word to one in trouble is often like a switch on a railroad tack - but one inch between wreck and smooth-rolling prosperity." - Henry Ward Beecher
"It is one of the worst effect of prosperity to make a man a vortex instead of a fountain; so that, instead of throwing out, he learns only to draw in." - Henry Ward Beecher
"A helping word to one in trouble is often like a switch on a railroad-track - an inch between wreck and smooth-rolling prosperity." - Henry Ward Beecher
"If God but cares for our inward and eternal life, if by all the experiences of this life He is reducing it and preparing for its disclosure, nothing can befall us but prosperity. Every sorrow shall be but the setting of some luminous jewel of joy. Our very morning shall be but the enamel around the diamond; our very hardships but the metallic rim that holds the opal, glancing with strange interior fires." - Henry Ward Beecher
"Watch lest prosperity destroy generosity." - Henry Ward Beecher
"The experience of the ages that are past, the hopes of the ages that are yet to come, unite their voices in an appeal to us; they implore us to think more of the character of our people than of its vast numbers; to look upon our vast natural resources, not as tempters to ostentation and pride, but as a means to be converted, by the refining alchemy of education, into mental and spiritual treasures - and thus give to the world the example of a nation whose wisdom increases with prosperity, and whose virtues are equal to its power." - Horace Mann
"Morality... must have the more power over the human heart the more purely it is exhibited. Whence it follows that, if the law of morality and the image of holiness and virtue are to exercise any influence at all on our souls, they can do so only so far as they are laid to heart in their purity as motives, unmixed with any view to prosperity, for it is in suffering that they display themselves most nobly." - Immanuel Kant
"He whom prosperity humbles, and adversity strengthens, is the true hero." - Josh Billings, pen name for Henry Wheeler Shaw, aka Uncle Esek
"Prosperity, obtained through truth and righteousness, is built on a sure rock. Happiness derived from falsehood, injustice and lust, is built on sand." - Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
"For not only is Fortune herself blind, but she generally causes those men to be blind whose interest she has more particularly embraced. Therefore they are often haughty and arrogant; nor is there anything more intolerable than a prosperous fool. And hence we often see that men who were at one time affable and agreeable are completely changed by prosperity, despising their old friends, and clinging to the new." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"In prosperity let us most carefully avoid pride, disdain, and arrogance." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"Books are the food of youth, the delight of old age; the ornament of prosperity, the refuge and comfort of adversity; a delight at home, and no hindrance abroad; companions by night, in traveling, in the country." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"Friendship makes prosperity more brilliant, and lightens adversity by dividing and sharing it." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"We need a free economy not only for the renewed material prosperity it will bring, but because it is indispensable to individual freedom, human dignity and to a more just, more honest society." - Margaret Thatcher, fully Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, née Roberts
"Nothing is harder to direct than a man in prosperity; nothing more easily managed than one in adversity." - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
"Prosperity is no just scale; adversity is the only balance to weigh friends." - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
"When a nation makes progress in science, technology, economic life, and the prosperity of its citizens, a great contribution is made to civilization. But all should realize that these things are not the highest good, but only instruments for pursuing such goods." - Pope John XXIII, born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli NULL
"Tragedy seems to consist in temperament, not in events. There are natures so doomed that no prosperity can soothe their ragged and disheveled desolation." - Ralph Waldo Emerson