quotations about poverty
Come away; poverty's catching.
APHRA BEHN
The Rover
If our family was poor, of what did our poverty consist? If our clothes were torn the torn places only let in the sun and wind. In the winter we had no overcoats, but that only meant we ran rather than loitered.
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
A Story Teller's Story
The thought which you allow yourself to entertain and send out is the motive power that impels you to right or wrong action, shaping your course leading you to poverty or fortune. If you indulge poverty thought, you attract poverty. If you walk two miles to save a nickel and are obsessed with saving small items, if in mind you always are seeing yourself growing poor, always afraid of losing money or spending it, you are putting out poverty thought, and will inevitably attract poverty.
WALTER MATTHEWS
"Poverty", Human Life from Many Angles
Poverty, the most fearful monster that ever drew breath.
ARISTOPHANES
Plutus
It is a common condition of being poor ... you are always afraid that the good things in your life are temporary, that someone can take them away, because you have no power beyond your own brute strength to stop them.
RICK BRAGG
attributed, The Economics of Poverty: History, Measurement, and Policy
Poverty, therefore, was comparative. One measured it by a sliding scale. One was always poor, in terms of those who were richer.
MARGARET DRABBLE
The Radiant Way
Better poverty without care, than riches with.
AESOP
"The Fir Tree and the Bramble", Aesop's Fables
Where poverty ceases, avarice begins.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Lost Illusions
Poverty possesses this disease: through want, it teaches a man evil.
EURIPIDES
attributed, Day's Collacon
The poor are the human manure in which grow the harvests of life, the harvests of joy which the rich reap.
OCTAVE MIRBEAU
The Diary of a Chambermaid
He that would be content with a mean condition must not cast his eye upon one that is in a far better estate than himself, but let him look upon him that is lower than he is, and, if he see that such a one bears poverty comfortably, it will help to quiet him.
ANNE BRADSTREET
Meditations Divine and Moral
The common stock of intellectual enjoyment should not be difficult of access because of the economic position of him who would approach it.
JANE ADDAMS
Twenty Years at Hull-House
No man can acquire the doubtful good of extreme wealth, without subjecting others to the undoubted evil of poverty.
JOHN H. HUNT
attributed, The History of the Loco-foco, Or Equal Rights Party
Whatever may be said of the dangers of riches, the dangers of poverty are tenfold greater. A condition in which one is exposed to continual want, not only of the luxuries but of the veriest necessaries of life, as well as to disease and discouragement, is exceedingly unfavorable to the exercise of the higher functions of the mind and soul. The poor man is hourly beset by troops of temptations which the rich man never knows.
WILLIAM MATHEWS
Hints on Success in Life
Poverty often hides her charms under an ugly mask; yet thousands have been forced into greatness by their very struggle to keep the wolf from the door.
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
Architects of Fate
Poverty snatches the reins out of the hand of piety.
SAADI
attributed, Day's Collacon
I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
"On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor", November 29, 1766
Real poverty comes only to those who indulge in food and drink. They have made themselves poor.
NAMBOKU MIZUNO
Food Governs Your Destiny
Poverty never sped well in love.
FRIEDRICH HALM
attributed, Day's Collacon
Poverty is the discoverer of all the arts.
APOLLONIUS
De Magia