Life & Wisdom Quote by Samuel Daniel

Nothing flatters human nature like peace; nothing exposes it like danger. Samuel Daniel's line, with its slightly clotted Renaissance syntax, makes a crisp argument: you don't really know someone by their manners in calm weather, you know them when the stakes rise and the script runs out. "Best" is doing quiet work here. Daniel isn't claiming we only learn what people do under pressure; he's claiming that's the most reliable knowledge available, the closest thing to truth about character.

The phrase "worse jeopardizes" (an older plural form of "jeopardy") tilts the thought toward escalation. Not just risk, but the moment risk becomes personal and costly: disgrace, loss, violence, exile. Daniel wrote in an England familiar with religious whiplash, court intrigue, and the brittle security of patronage. In that world, loyalty was often a performance until it suddenly wasn't. Jeopardy turns virtue from ornament into decision.

The subtext is both moral and skeptical. Moral, because the line assumes something like an inner self that can be tested and revealed. Skeptical, because it implies that much of social life is camouflage: politeness, piety, even friendship can be rehearsed. Crisis strips away the rhetorical self, leaving the practical self: who hoards, who shares, who lies, who steadies others, who panics.

It's a poet's version of the stress test. Daniel isn't romanticizing catastrophe; he's warning that comfort can make us misread each other, and ourselves.