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Perhaps none of you has ever inquired, men of Athens, just why men in adversity deliberate more wisely over their affairs than do the prosperous. This comes about for no other reason than this, that it is not natural for the prosperous to feel any alarm or to believe that such dangers as someone may report concern themselves; those, however, who are close in time to the mistakes through which they have come to adversity are rendered discreet with reference to future actions and inclined to moderation.1

1 Aesch. Ag. 176-178 “Zeus who sets mortals in the path of wisdom and hath enacted a law of learning by suffering.”

Demosthenes with an English translation by Norman W. DeWitt, Ph.D., and Norman J. DeWitt, Ph.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1949.

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    • Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 176
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