1. Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends.
Woody Allen (b. 1935) U.S. actor, humorist, producer, and director. Getting Even (1971)

2. Prosperity doth best discover vice; but adversity doth best discover virtue.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher and statesman. “Of Adversity,” Essays (1597-1625)

3. Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and Adversity is not without comfort and hope.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher and statesman. “Of dversity,” Essays (1597-1625)

4. Economic distress will teach men, if anything can, that realities are less dangerous than fancies, that fact-finding is more effective than fault-finding.
Carl Becker (1873-1945) U.S. historian. Progress and Power (1935)

5. Whom prosperity make our friend, adversity will make our enemy.
Boethius (480?-524) Roman philosopher and statesman. De Consolatione Philosophiae (524), bk.3,ch. 4.

6. Whenever our neighbour’s house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engine to play a little on our own.
Edmund Burke (1729-97) British philosopher and politician. Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

7. Adversity is the first path to truth.
Lord Byron (1788-1824) British poet. Don Juan (183), can. 12, st. 50

8. Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand properity, there are a hundred that will stand diversity.
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) British historian and essayist. “The Hero as Man of Letters,” On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841)

9. If you have bright plumage, people will take pot shots at you.
Alan Clark (1928-99) British politician and diarist. Independent (London) (June 25, 1994)

10. Without humanity a man cannot long endure adversity, nor can be long enjoy prosperity.
Confucius (551-479 B.C.) Chinese philosopher, administrator, and writer. Analects (500? B.C.)

11. There is no education like adversity.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81) British prime minister and novelist. Endymion (1880), ch. 61

12. After calamities, more caution.
Desiderius Erasmus (1466?-1536) Dutch writer, scholar, and humanist. Adagia (1523), chiliadis 4, centuria 3, no. 59

13. If afflictions refine some, they consume others.
Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician and writer. Gnomologia (1732)

14. I think large organizations have a real tendency to block bad news from moving around the organization. People don’t know how to deal with it…having it just be a matter of course that you get the bad news out there, and everybody is…talking about it on an open basis, I think is really fundamental.
Bill Gates (b.1955) U.S. entrepreneur, chairman and C.E.O. of Microsoft. Speech, Microsoft’s Second Annual C.E.O. Summit, Seattle, Washington (May 28, 1998)

15. Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) British essayist and journalist. “On the Conversation of Cards,” Essays (1819)

16. Adversity is wont to reveal genius, prosperity to hide it.
Horace (65-8 B.C.) Roman poet and satirist. Satires (30 B.C.), bk. 2, Satire 8

17. He knows not his own strength who has not met adversity.
Ben Jonson (1572-1637) English playwright and poet. “Explorarta,” Timber, or Discoveries (1640)

18. Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity, and stumble from defeat to defeat.
Ryszard Kapuscinski (b.1932) Polish journalist and author. “A Warsaw Diary,” Granta (1985)

19. It is common fault of men not to reckon on storms in fair weather.
Nicollo Machiavelli (1469-1527) Italian historian, statesman, and political philosopher. The Prince (1513), ch. 24.

20. In adversity a man is saved by hope.
Menander (342?-292? B.C.) Athenian dramatist. Fragments (300? B.C.)

21. Feelings of anger or dismay, a sense of injustice-these are the responses to downward mobility shared by most of its victims.
Katherine S. Newman (b.1953) U.S> anthropologist. Falling from Grace (1988)

22. Prosperity proves the fortunate, adversity the great.
Pliny the Younger (62-113) Roman government official. Panegyric on Trajan (A.D. 100), sect 31.

23. The highest form of success…comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) U.S. president. April 10, 1899. “The Strenuous Life,” Essays and Addresses (1900)

24. Sweet are the uses of adversity, which like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English poet and playwright. As You Like It (1599), Act 2, Scene 1, II, 12-13.

25 If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Harry S. Truman (1864-1972) U.S> president Mr. Citizen (1960)Ad