Poor Boy Quotes

• Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.

  Sholom Aleichem

  Life, Wise, Dream

  102 Copy quote

• Lately I've been runnin' on faith. What else can a poor boy do?

  Jerry Lynn Williams

  Courage, Boys, Poor

  9 Copy quote

• Is this the real life?
  Is this just fantasy?
  Caught in a landslide,
  No escape from reality.
  
  Open your eyes,
  Look up to the skies and see,
  I'm just a poor boy, I need no sympathy,
  Because I'm easy come, easy go,
  Little high, little low,
  Any way the wind blows doesn't really matter to me, to me.

  Freddie Mercury

  Song, Real, Eye

  Song: Bohemian Rhapsody

  70 Copy quote

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• Mankind is divided into rich and poor, into property owners and exploited; and to abstract oneself from this fundamental division; and from the antagonism between poor and rich means abstracting oneself from fundamental facts.

  Joseph Stalin

  Mean, Division, Fundamentals

  Joseph Stalin (1978). “1934-1940”

  40 Copy quote

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• If the poor boy cannot come to education,
  education must go to him

  Swami Vivekananda

  Boys, Poor, Ifs

  Swami Vivekananda “My Idea of Education”, Advaita Ashrama (A publication branch of Ramakrishna Math, Belur Math)

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• That was always my experience-a poor boy in a rich town; a poor boy in a rich boy's school; a poor boy in a rich man's club at Princeton .... However, I have never been able to forgive the rich for being rich, and it has colored my entire life and works.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  School, Boys, Men

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2010). “A Life in Letters”, p.586, Simon and Schuster

  13 Copy quote

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• There is a house in New Orleans they call the Rising Sun, and it's been the ruin of many a poor boy and God I know I'm one.

  Bob Dylan

  Boys, Social Taboos, New Orleans

  5 Copy quote

• I am just a poor boy, though my story's seldom told, and I have squandered my resistance, for a pocket full of mumbles, such are promises. All lies in jest, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest...la-la-la-la-la-la-la-lala-la-la-la-la...

  Paul Simon

  Lying, Boys, Men

  4 Copy quote

• When I got outta High School I was driving a truck. I was just a poor boy from Memphis, Memphis.

  Elvis Presley

  School, Boys, Boots

  30 Copy quote

• I did not grow up in poverty. But I did grow up with a poor boy's sense of longing, in my case not for what my family had never had, but for what we had had and lost.

  Mohsin Hamid

  Growing Up, Boys, Poverty

  Mohsin Hamid (2007). “The Reluctant Fundamentalist”, p.71, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Your parents don't give you much love, do they?' 'I don't need that stuff,' I told her. 'Henry, everybody needs love.' 'I don't need anything.' 'You poor boy.

  Charles Bukowski

  Boys, Giving, Parent

  Charles Bukowski (2001). “Ham On Rye”, p.53, Canongate Books

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• Sometimes I hear the world discussed as the realm of men. This is not my experience. I have watched men fall to the ground like leaves. They were swept up as memories, and burned. History owns them. These men were petrified in both senses of the word: paralyzed and turned to stone. Their refusal to express feeling killed them. Anachronistic men. Those poor, poor boys.

  Antonella Gambotto-Burke

  Memories, Fall, Men

  Antonella Gambotto-Burke (2013). “The Eclipse: A Memoir of Suicide”, p.16, Antonella Gambotto-Burke

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• You cannot tell a poor boy from a small country town on the plains of South Dakota who has had the opportunity to be a teacher, a mayor, a senator, and a vice president, that America is not a nation of promise.

  Hubert H. Humphrey

  Wisdom, Country, Teacher

  4 Copy quote

• The state of my poor boy's health prevents me from leaving home for a night.

  Edward Irving

  Home, Boys, Night

  9 Copy quote

• I don't want you to describe to me—not ever—what you were doing to that poor boy to make him sound like that; but if you ever do it again, please cover his mouth with your hand.

  John Irving

  Boys, Hands, Sound

  John Irving (2012). “A Prayer for Owen Meany: A Novel”, p.16, Harper Collins

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• Who ever saw his old clothes, - his old coat, actually worn out, resolved into its primitive elements, so that it was not a deed of charity to bestow it on some poor boy, by him perchance to be bestowed on some poorer still, or shall we say richer, who could do with less? I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Boys, Clothes, Environmental

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.24, Graphic Arts Books

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• Confronted with the unhappy facts of exclusion, we sometimes reassure ourselves by telling stories: the poor boys who made it, theblacks who became a "credit to their race," the women elected to high office, the handicapped who made "useful contributions" to our society.... Just as we believe in the self-sufficient family, we also believe that any child with enough grit and ability can escape poverty and make a rewarding life. But these stories and beliefs clearly reflect the exceptions.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Children, Believe, Boys

  Kenneth Keniston (1977). “All Our Children: The American Family Under Pressure”, Harcourt on Demand

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• My husband had a clothing store in Paris, and I had his factory make specifically for me something similar to the one I was looking for. We made it in different colours, and decided to sell them in the store...and in a day, they were sold out! This sweater became later known as the "poor boy sweater" and it ended up making the cover of Elle magazine, and in a day, I became the "Queen of knit", without knowing anything about knitting!

  Sonia Rykiel

  Queens, Husband, Boys

  Source: www.stilorama.com

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• Through it all, this wild life on and off the road , through Jordanian deserts , Spanish islands, German prisons, Caribbean tax scams, halls of fame,wine, women, and all the drugs under the sun - one constant companion has never abandoned me . My first true love : singing Its been the savior of many poor boy, and God I know I'm one

  Eric Burdon

  Wine, Boys, Islands

  Eric Burdon, Jeff Marshall Craig (2002). “Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood”, p.316, Da Capo Press

  53 Copy quote

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• It would have been cruel in Miss Havisham, horribly cruel, to practise on the susceptibility of a poor boy, and to torture me through all these years with a vain hope and an idle pursuit, if she had reflected on the gravity of what she did. But I think she did not. I think that in the endurance of her own trial, she forgot mine, Estella.

  Charles Dickens

  Boys, Thinking, Years

  Charles Dickens (2009). “The Complete Works of Charles Dickens: Great Expectations”, p.343, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Part of what depresses me so much about football is that it's so clearly about exploiting people, most of them poor boys of color, because of what they can do to entertain us, not because we have any genuine concern for them as people.

  Steve Almond

  Football, Depressing, Boys

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Iqbal, that great poet, was so right. The moment you recognize what is beautiful in this world, you stop being a slave. To hell with the Naxals and their guns shipped from China. If you taught every poor boy how to paint, that would be the end of the rich in India.

  Aravind Adiga

  Beautiful, Gun, Boys

  Aravind Adiga (2008). “The White Tiger”, p.163, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• Education had been a great gift for him [Ziauddin]. He believed that lack of education was the root of all the Pakistan's problems. Ignorance allowed politicians to fool people and bad administrators to be reelected. He believed schooling should be available for all, rich and poor, boys and girls.

  Malala Yousafzai

  Girl, Powerful, Ignorance

  11 Copy quote