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When Eutrapelus wished to harm a rogue, He gave him fine clothes and wealth to make him grand. For, rich now, he would change his mind completely, Keep prostitutes, run wild and put honesty last.
On the other hand, in adversity many grumble, complain and despair, and so on. Both conditions are bad, I admit:
As with a shoe: If it is too big for the foot, it trips you; if too small, it chafes.
Like a shoe too big or too small: one pinches, the other turns the foot awry. “But choose the least of evils.” If adversity has killed its thousand, prosperity has killed its ten thousand. Adversity is therefore to be preferred. “The one needs a bridle, the other consolation; the one deceives, the other instructs.” One is miserably happy, the other happily miserable. Many philosophers have therefore sought adversity of their own accord and praise it so highly in their teachings.
Demetrius, in Seneca, thought it a great misfortune that he had met no misfortune in his lifetime: “Unhappy is the man to whom nothing adverse has ever happened.” Adversity, then, should not be taken so heavily; in such circumstances we ought not to wear ourselves away so much. There is no such great difference between poverty and riches.
To conclude in Jerome’s words: I will ask our grandees, who build with marble and spend an entire estate on a thread, what difference there is between them and Paul the Hermit, that destitute old man. They drink from jewelled cups; he drinks from his hand. He is poor and goes to heaven; they are rich and go to hell.