Life & Wisdom Quote by Joseph Addison

Addison is quietly policing the moral imagination here, reminding his polished, coffeehouse audience that virtue isn’t a single, flattering costume you wear everywhere. It’s situational, and the situation is the test. “Affliction” and “prosperity” aren’t just opposing moods; they’re social weather systems that expose different kinds of character. Under pressure, the showy virtues go dark and the unglamorous ones light up: patience, courage, endurance, honesty when there’s nothing to gain. In comfort, a different trap appears. Security can breed softness, vanity, and moral laziness, so the virtues that matter are harder, not easier: restraint, generosity without performance, humility when you have reasons not to be humble.

The line works because it refuses the comforting fantasy that “good people” are consistently good in a way that’s legible to others. Addison’s subtext is almost diagnostic: if you only admire the virtues that appear in suffering, you risk romanticizing hardship and distrusting joy. If you only praise the virtues of prosperity, you mistake luck for merit and polish for goodness. The sentence is balanced like an Enlightenment couplet, but its edge is practical. It tells the reader to stop making moral judgments based on a single season of someone’s life.

In Addison’s early-18th-century context - a culture obsessed with manners, reputation, and rising commercial wealth - this is also a warning shot to the comfortable: prosperity doesn’t certify virtue; it merely changes the exam.