Daily Inspiration Quote by John Churton Collins

Prosperity is a flattering spotlight: it makes you look important, and it draws a crowd eager to be seen near the glow. Collins’s line cuts through the sentimentality of “true friendship” by reframing the social contract as something tested less by feeling than by pressure. When life is going well, “our friends know us” suggests recognition without cost. Success creates a clear, legible version of you - the one with invitations, influence, and proof of worth. People can “know” that person easily; attachment is almost frictionless.

Adversity flips the grammar of intimacy. “We know our friends” is a quiet indictment: hardship doesn’t just reveal who stays, it forces a recalibration of your own judgment. You’re no longer being appraised; you’re the one doing the appraising, because scarcity demands triage. Collins implies that prosperity lets others define you (sometimes opportunistically), while adversity returns agency. You learn, painfully, who is motivated by loyalty rather than access.

As a late-Victorian critic, Collins is writing from inside a culture obsessed with reputation, clubbability, and the moral theater of public life. The aphorism has the polished, prosecutorial efficiency of an era that prized maxims as social tools. Its sting is in the asymmetry: good times test other people’s interest in you; bad times test your ability to see clearly. Friendship becomes less a warm ideal than a form of social knowledge earned under stress.