Daily Inspiration Quote by David Hare

Prosperity is supposed to be the happy ending, but Hare treats it as a second stress test, quieter and more corrupting than catastrophe. The line flips the usual morality play - adversity builds character, success rewards it - and suggests the opposite: abundance can dissolve people just as efficiently as hardship, only with better lighting and nicer clothes. That’s a playwright’s instinct. Hare has spent a career watching how institutions and private lives rationalize themselves, how comfort doesn’t merely soothe but sedates.

The intent is diagnostic, almost clinical. “Weak minds” don’t break only when the roof caves in; they also buckle when the roof gets upgraded. Prosperity invites a different kind of surrender: complacency, entitlement, moral drift, the soft self-deception that you “deserve” whatever the moment offers. Adversity strips choices down; prosperity multiplies them, which means more opportunities to evade responsibility without noticing you’re evading it.

The phrase “two high tides” does the real work. It’s not a motivational poster about resilience; it’s an image of cyclical force. High tide is when the water rises and everything shifts - not calm, not stable, not safe. Hare implies strong, deep people don’t just withstand extremes; they are enlarged by them, in both directions. They can metabolize loss and success, keep their bearings when life surges, and avoid mistaking favorable conditions for personal virtue.

Contextually, it lands as a late-20th-century British warning shot: Thatcher-era winners, cultural elites, political classes - all tempted to confuse comfort with character.