"In prosperity our friends know us; in adversity we know our friends." - Churton Collins, Aphorisms

"Most of our misfortunes are more supportable than the comments of our friends upon them." - Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon

"I never knew any man in my life who could not bear another's misfortunes perfectly like a Christian." - Alexander Pope, Thoughts on Various Subjects

"We become wiser by adversity; prosperity destroys our appreciation of the right." - Seneca

"If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own." - Socrates

"Friendship is a plant of slow growth and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation." - George Washington

"Prosperity doth best discover vice, but Adversity doth best discover virtue." - FRANCIS BACON, Essays

"The greatest object in the universe, says a certain philosopher, is a good man struggling with adversity; yet there is still a greater, which is the good man that comes to relieve it." - OLIVER GOLDSMITH, The Vicar of Wakefield

"If a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it." - SAMUEL JOHNSON, quoted in James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson

"Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle." - JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, Fireside Travels

"Who would have known of Hector, if Troy had been happy? The road to valor is built by adversity." - OVID, Tristia

"Nothing is so bitter that a calm mind cannot find comfort in it." - SENECA, De Tranquillitate Animi

"Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head."
- SHAKESPEARE, As You Like It

"How did the great rivers and seas gain dominion over the hundred lesser streams? By being lower than they." - Lao-tse [Lao-tzu] (c604-c531 B.C.)