Poor Quotes - Page 9

• Pale death, with impartial step, knocks at the hut of the poor and the towers of kings.
  [Lat., Pallida mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas
  Regumque turres.]

  Horace

  Death, Kings, Towers

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• Being wealthy isn't just a question of having lots of money. It's a question of what we want. Wealth isn't an absolute, it's relative to desire. Every time we seek something that we can't afford, we can be counted as poor, how much money we may actually have.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Desire, May, Want

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• The man possessed of a dollar, feels himself to be not merely one hundred cents richer, but also one hundred cents better, than the man who is penniless; so on through all the gradations of earthly possessions - the estimate of our own moral and political importance swelling always in a ratio exactly proportionate to the growth of our purse.

  Frances Wright

  Men, Political, Growth

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• How like a railway tunnel is the poor man's life, with the light of childhood at one end, the intermediate gloom, and only the glimmer of a future life at the other extremity!

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Men, Tunnels, Light

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1862). “Intuitions and Summaries of Thought”, p.13

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• Qualities not regulated run into their opposites. Economy before competence is meanness after it. Therefore economy is for the poor; the rich may dispense with it.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Running, Opposites, Quality

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• Necessity reforms the poor, and satiety reforms the rich.

  Tacitus

  Reform, Rich, Satiety

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• D'you call life a bad job? Never! We've had our ups and downs, we've had our struggles, we've always been poor, but it's been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times I say when I look round at my children.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Jobs, Children, Struggle

  W. Somerset Maugham (2013). “The Essential W. Somerset Maugham Collection”, p.2171, eBookIt.com

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• The very flowers are sacred to the poor.

  William Wordsworth

  Flower, Sacred

  William Wordsworth (1847). “The Poems of William Wordsworth”, p.197

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• There are so many intellectual and moral angels battling for rationalism, good citizenship, and pure spirituality; so many and such eminent ones, so very vocal and authoritative! The poor devil in man needs all the support and advocacy he can get. The artist is his natural champion. When an artist deserts to the side of the angels, it is the most odious of treasons.

  Aldous Huxley

  Angel, Artist, Men

  Aldous Huxley (1970). “Collected Works: Do what you will”

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• It is a kind of blindness--poverty. We can only grope through life when we are poor, hitting and maiming ourselves against every angle.

  Ouida

  Poverty, Hitting, Kind

  Ouida (1873). “Pascarèl: Only a Story”, p.78

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• As a rule, only the poor are generous. Rich people can always find excellent reasons for not handing over twenty thousand francs to a relative.

  Honore de Balzac

  People, Generosity, Twenties

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• Poor kids are much more likely to become sick than their richer counterparts, but much less likely to have health insurance. Talk about a double whammy.

  Anna Quindlen

  Kids, Sick, Care

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• Wishes, at least, are the easy pleasures of the poor.

  Douglas William Jerrold

  Wish, Easy, Pleasure

  Douglas William Jerrold, Blanchard Jerrold (1859). “Specimens of Douglas Jerrold's wit: together with selections, chiefly from his contributions to journals, intended to illustrate his opinions”, p.24

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• a great deal of the wealth at the top is built on the low-wage labor of the poor. Take Wal-Mart, our largest private employer and premiere exploiter of the working class. ... You think it's a coincidence that this union-busting low-wage retail empire happens to have generated a $65 billion family fortune?

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Thinking, Class, Retail

  Barbara Ehrenreich (2008). “Going to Extremes: Notes from a Divided Nation”, Granta Books (UK)

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• I have known men who thought the object of conversion was to cleanse them as a garment is cleansed, and that when they are converted they were to be hung up in the Lord's wardrobe, the door of which was to be shut, so that no dust could get at them. A coat that is not used the moths eat; and a Christian who is hung up so that he shall not be tempted, the moths eat him; and they have poor food at that.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Christian, Men, Dust

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• Charity in various guises is an intruder the poor see often; but courtesy and delicacy are visitants with which they are seldom honored.

  Ouida

  Charity, Delicacy, Courtesy

  Ouida (1890*). “Moths. The marquis's tactics. Meleagris Gallopavo. Guilderoy”

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• To say to a rich man: You are poor! is to tell the Archbishop of Granada that his sermons are worthless.

  Honore de Balzac

  Men, Rich, Granada

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• Creative new health strategies like micro-insurance for poor people or Kangaroo care for pre-term babies are transforming health outcomes in even the most low-resource settings. Dedication and innovation are transforming health care worldwide.

  Liya Kebede

  Baby, Dedication, People

  "Redefining “Impossible” When It Comes To Maternal Mortality" by Liya Kebede, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 21, 2010.

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• If the poor ever feel poor as the rich do, we will have a most bloody revolution.

  Rebecca West

  Revolution, Wealth, Rich

  Rebecca West (2010). “The Thinking Reed”, p.263, Open Road Media

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• If you feed the poor, you're a saint. If you ask why they're poor, you're a Communist.

  Dorothy Day

  Saint, Communist, Asks

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• part of the problem with a war on poverty today is that many Americans have decided that being poor is a character defect, not an economic condition.

  Anna Quindlen

  War, Character, Today

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• Sometime in the eighties, Americans had a new set of 'traditional values' installed. ... the poor and the middle class were shaken down, and their loose change funneled blithely upwards to the already overfed.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Class, Down And, Rich

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• By the Reagan era, the 'culture of poverty' had become a cornerstone of conservative ideology: poverty was caused not by low wages or a lack of jobs but by bad attitudes and faulty lifestyles. The poor were dissolute, promiscuous, prone to addiction and crime, unable to 'defer gratification' or possibly even set an alarm clock. The last thing they could be trusted with was money.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Jobs, Attitude, Addiction

  "Tomgram: Barbara Ehrenreich, American Poverty, 50 Years Later". www.tomdispatch.com. March 15, 2012.

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• There are so many ready to write (poor fools!) for the honor and glory of the thing, and there are so many ready to take advantage of this fact, and withhold from needy talent the moral right to a deserved remuneration.

  Fanny Fern

  Writing, Honor, Fool

  Fanny Fern (2016). “Ruth Hall”, p.164, Fanny Fern

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• Fortunes are made, if I the facts may state--
  Though poor myself, I know the fortunate:
  First, there's a knowledge of the way from whence
  Good fortune comes--and this is sterling sense:
  Then perseverance, never to decline
  The chase of riches till the prey is thine;
  And firmness never to be drawn away
  By any passion from that noble prey--
  By love, ambition, study, travel, fame,
  Or the vain hope that lives upon a name.

  George Crabbe

  Perseverance, Ambition, Passion

  George Crabbe (1839). “The Poetical Works of Crabbe, Heber, and Pollok: Complete in One Volume”, p.364

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