It is universally agreed that good fortune we must ask of the Gods, but wisdom must arise from ourselves; and though temples have been consecrated to the Mind, to Virtue, and to Faith, yet that does not contradict their being inherent in us.

In regard to hope, safety, assistance, and victory, we must rely upon the Gods for them; from whence it follows, as Diogenes said, that the prosperity of the wicked destroys the idea of a Divine Providence.
XXXVII.

But good men have sometimes success.

They have so; but we cannot, with any show of reason, attribute that success to the Gods.
Diagoras, who is called the atheist, being at Samothrace, one of his friends showed him several pictures[287] of people who had endured very dangerous storms; "See," says he, "you who deny a providence, how many have been saved by their prayers to the Gods." "Ay," says Diagoras, "I see those who were saved, but where are those painted who were shipwrecked ?" At another time, he himself was in a storm, when the sailors, being greatly alarmed, told him they justly deserved that misfortune for admitting him into their ship; when he, pointing to others under the like distress, asked them "if they believed Diagoras was also aboard those ships ?" In short, with regard to good or bad fortune, it matters not what you are, or how you have lived.

The Gods, like kings, regard not everything.