The Anatomy of Melancholy

So it is with many men: if some new honour, office, advancement, spoils, treasure, property or inheritance falls to them unexpectedly, excessive joy and continual thinking about it keep them from sleeping or knowing what they say or do. They are suddenly so enraptured and carried away by vain notions that there is no controlling them. Epaminondas therefore went out shabby and subdued on the day after his victory at Leuctra. He gave his friends no other reason than that he had noticed himself becoming too arrogant and excessively joyful the day before because of his good fortune.

That wise and virtuous lady, Queen Katherine, dowager of England, said in private conversation on a similar occasion that she would not willingly experience the extreme of either fortune. But if necessity forced her to undergo one of them, she would choose adversity, because comfort was never lacking there, whereas good counsel and self-government were always deficient in the other. People could not moderate themselves.