When you forget to take the sail at all, then the wind is constantly in your favour both ways. But there! this world is only a probation, and man was born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. – Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), 1889
Watch a man in times of… adversity to discover what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off. – Lucretius, On the Nature of Things