POVERTY QUOTES II
quotations about poverty
Poverty is no sin, but it is a branch of roguery.
PEDRO CALDERON DE LA BARCA
attributed, Day's Collacon
If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
CHARLES DARWIN
The Voyage of the Beagle
The very poor are materialistic. It takes money to be a mystic.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)
Poverty is never by the grace of God in the estimation of a New-Englander. It comes to him by post from the other direction.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.
BIBLE
Proverbs 14:31
In Zen, poverty is voluntary, and considered not really as poverty so much as simplicity, freedom, unclutteredness.
ALAN WATTS
What Is Zen?
Let us rejoice that we are poor,
And have no gold to keep:
We do not need to bar the door
Ere we can go to sleep.
ROBERT LEIGHTON
"Let Us Rejoice That We Are Poor"
In the Bible poverty is a scandalous condition inimical to human dignity and therefore contrary to the will of God.
GUSTAVO GUTIERREZ
A Theology of Liberation
Where people are really attached, poverty itself is wealth.
JANE AUSTEN
Northanger Abbey
You can never have international peace as long as you have national poverty.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
Last Leaves
If rich, it is easy enough to conceal our wealth; but, if poor, it is not quite so easy to conceal our poverty. We shall find that it is less difficult to hide a thousand guineas, than one hole in our coat.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
In truth, poverty is an anomaly to rich people. It is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The Waverley Novels
You cannot sift out the poor from the community. The poor are indispensable to the rich.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.
MOTHER TERESA
A Simple Path
The noblest people are those despising wealth, learning, pleasure and life; esteeming above them poverty, ignorance, hardship and death.
DIOGENES OF SINOPE
Stobaeus
You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.
FRANK MCCOURT
Angela's Ashes
Give me, Lord, neither poverty nor riches.
WILLIAM COBBETT
Political Register, December 22, 1832
It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.
GEORGE ORWELL
1984
I hate those people who love to tell you
Money is the root of all that kills
They have never been poor
They have never had the joy of a welfare Christmas
EVERCLEAR
"I Will Buy You a New Life"
Boredom is the keynote of poverty -- of all its indignities, it is perhaps the hardest of all to live with -- for where there is no money there is no change of any kind.
MOSS HART
Act One