Definition of poor

"poor" in the noun sense

1. poor people, poor

people without possessions or wealth (considered as a group

"the urban poor need assistance"

"poor" in the adjective sense

1. hapless, miserable, misfortunate, pathetic, piteous, pitiable, pitiful, poor, wretched

deserving or inciting pity

"a hapless victim"

"miserable victims of war"

"the shabby room struck her as extraordinarily pathetic"- Galsworthy

"piteous appeals for help"

"pitiable homeless children"

"a pitiful fate"

"Oh, you poor thing"

"his poor distorted limbs"

"a wretched life"

2. poor

having little money or few possessions

"deplored the gap between rich and poor countries"

"the proverbial poor artist living in a garret"

3. poor

characterized by or indicating poverty

"the country had a poor economy"

"they lived in the poor section of town"

4. poor

lacking in quality or substances

"a poor land"

"the area was poor in timber and coal"

"food poor in nutritive value"

"the food in the cafeteria was of poor quality"

5. inadequate, poor, short, jejune

of insufficient quantity to meet a need

"an inadequate income"

"a poor salary"

"money is short"

"on short rations"

"food is in short supply"

"short on experience"

"the jejune diets of the very poor"

Source: WordNet® (An amazing lexical database of English)

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Quotations for poor

Alms never make poor. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Avarice is always poor. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Patience with poverty
Is a poor man's remedy.

And plenty makes us poor. [ Dryden ]

I have had, is a poor man. [ German Proverb ]

Better be poor than wicked. [ Proverb ]

Whose plenty made him poor. [ Spenser ]

Dependance is a poor trade. [ Proverb ]

Poor in purse, sick at heart. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Hope is the poor man's bread. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Economy, the poor man's mint. [ Tupper ]

If I had known, is a poor man. [ German Proverb ]

Cupid is a knavish lad,
Thus to make poor females mad. [ William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Nights Dream ]

Poor folks are soon pissed on. [ Proverb ]

Children are poor men's riches. [ Proverb ]

The poor keep a continual fast. [ Proverb ]

Ability is a poor man's wealth. [ Matthew Wren ]

A poor man gets a poor marriage. [ Proverb ]

Poverty makes men poor spirited. [ Proverb ]

Poor folks are glad of porridge. [ Proverb ]

Fortune, that arrant whore,
Ne'er turns the key to the poor. [ William Shakespeare ]

Reckless haste makes poor speed. [ Franklin ]

He's poor indeed whom God hates. [ Proverb ]

Poor men's reasons are not heard. [ Proverb ]

The poor make no new friends;
But oh, they love the better still
The few our Father sends. [ Lady Dufferin ]

The reasons of the poor weigh not. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Thanks, the exchequer of the poor. [ William Shakespeare ]

Music is the poor man's Parnassus. [ Emerson ]

Poor men's tables are soon spread. [ Proverb ]

The poor man's wisdom is despised. [ South ]

God help the rich, the poor can beg. [ Proverb ]

Poor and liberal, rich and covetous. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

No man lives so poor as he was born. [ Proverb ]

When darkness gathers over all,
And the last tottering pillars fall,
Take the poor dust Thy mercy warms,
And mould it into heavenly forms. [ O. W. Holmes ]

The poor must dance as the rich pipe. [ German Proverb ]

The poor are only they who feel poor. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Rob not the poor, because he is poor. [ Bible ]

Few, save the poor, feel for the poor. [ L. E. Landon ]

Respect us human, and relieve us poor. [ Pope ]

A poor man's debt makes a great noise. [ Proverb ]

A poor pleader may do in a plain cause. [ Proverb ]

The rich poor man is emphatically poor. [ Proverb ]

The poor man's shilling is but a penny. [ Proverb ]

A poor wedding is a prologue to misery. [ Proverb ]

O death! the poor man's dearest friend,
The kindest and the best!
Welcome the hour, my aged limbs
Are laid with thee at rest! [ Burns ]

Who loves law, dies either mad or poor. [ Middleton ]

Gratefulness is the poor man's payment. [ Proverb ]

Much food is in the tillage of the poor. [ Bible ]

We know that wealth well understood,
Hath frequent power of doing good;
Then fancy that the thing is done,
As if the power and will were one;
Thus oft the cheated crowd adore,
The thriving knaves that keep them poor. [ Gay ]

A poor idle man cannot be an honest man. [ Achilles Poincelot ]

But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed. [ Shakespeare ]

He is a poor smith who cannot bear smoke. [ Proverb ]

The poor man's budget is full of schemes. [ Proverb ]

How poor are they who have not patience!
What wound did ever heal, but by degrees? [ William Shakespeare ]

Oh, say! what is that thing called light,
Which I must never enjoy?
What are the blessings of the sight?
Oh, tell your poor blind boy! [ Colley Cibber ]

A poor man's cow dies a rich man's child. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Men work but slowly that have poor wages. [ Proverb ]

The hand of the poor is the purse of God. [ Du Vair ]

Poor is the friendless master of a world:
A world in purchase for a friend is gain. [ Dr. Young ]

The prince, who kept the world in awe.
The judge, whose dictate fix'd the law.
The rich, the poor, the great, the small,
Are levelled: death confounds them all. [ Gay ]

Willing minds take up with poor exercises. [ Proverb ]

You see me here, - a poor old man,
As full of grief as age; wretched in both! [ William Shakespeare ]

It is the mind that maketh good or ill.
That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor. [ Spenser ]

O world, how apt the poor are to be proud! [ William Shakespeare ]

Poor folks must say thank ye for a little. [ Proverb ]

A proud mind and a poor purse are ill met. [ Proverb ]

Death robs the rich and relieves the poor. [ J. L. Basford ]

He that needs five thousand pound to live,
Is full as poor as he that needs but five. [ George Herbert ]

He is poor indeed that can promise nothing. [ Proverb ]

Rich men have often the hearts of poor men. [ Proverb ]

Good blood makes poor pudding without suet. [ Proverb ]

And poor misfortune feels the lash of vice. [ Thomson ]

Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks. [ William Shakespeare, Hamlet ]

Good sword has often been in poor scabbard. [ Gaelic Proverb ]

They say, poor suitors have strong breaths. [ William Shakespeare ]

Distrust and darkness of a future state
Make poor mankind so fearful of their fate,
Death in itself is nothing; but we fear
To be we know not what, we know not where. [ John Dryden ]

Though death be poor, it ends a mortal woe. [ William Shakespeare ]

Here lies my wife, poor Molly, let her lie,
She finds repose at last, and so do I. [ Epitaph ]

And torture one poor word ten thousand ways. [ Dryden ]

The poor wren,
The most diminutive of birds, will fight,
Her young ones in her nest, against the owl. [ William Shakespeare, Macbeth ]

He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man. [ Bible ]

The poor is hated even of his own neighbour. [ Bible ]

It is poor play that is not worth the candle. [ Proverb ]

Look not on pleasures as they come, but go.
Defer not the least virtue; life's poor span
Make not an ell by trifling in thy woe.
If thou do ill, the joy fades, not the pains;
If well, the pain doth fade, the joy remains. [ George Herbert ]

To the noble mind
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. [ William Shakespeare, Hamlet ]

Positiveness is an evidence of poor judgment. [ Proverb ]

The rich are trustees under God for the poor. [ Proverb ]

Government should direct poor men what to do. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears Him in the wind. [ Pope ]

Tears are a good alterative, but a poor diet. [ H. W. Shaw ]

Poor worms, they hiss at me, whilst I at home
Can be contented to applaud myself, with joy,
To see how plump my bags are and my barns. [ Ben Jonson ]

Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. [ William Shakespeare, Hamlet ]

Wisdom in a poor man is a diamond set in lead. [ Proverb ]

But, poor old man, thou prunest a rotten tree,
That cannot so much as a blossom yield
In lieu of all thy pains and husbandry. [ William Shakespeare ]

Hazard not your wealth on a poor man's advice. [ Manuel Conde Lucanor ]

The rich follow wealth, and the poor the rich. [ Proverb ]

Tired he sleeps, and Life's poor play is over. [ Pope ]

The learned is happy nature to explore,
The fool is happy that he knows no more;
The rich is happy in the plenty given.
The poor contents him with the care of Heaven. [ Pope ]

How poor a thing is pride! when all, as
Differ but in their fetters, not their graves. [ Daniels ]

Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more! It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. [ William Shakespeare, Macbeth ]

Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutor'd mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears Him in the wind;
His soul proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way;
Yet simple nature to his hope has given,
Behind the cloud-topt hills, a humbler heaven. [ Pope ]

A poor beauty finds more lovers than husbands. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Genius counts all its miracles poor and short. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Windy attorneys to their client woes,
Airy succeeders of intestate joys,
Poor breathing orators of miseries!
Let them have scope: though what they do impart
Help nothing else, yet do they ease the heart. [ William Shakespeare ]

The poor too often turn away unheard,
From hearts that shut against them with a sound
That will be heard in heaven. [ Longfellow ]

No class escapes them - from the poor man's pay
The nostrum takes no trifling part away;
Time, too, with cash is wasted; 'tis the fate
Of real helpers, to be called too late;
This find the sick, when time and patience gone
Death with a tenfold terror hurries on. [ Crabbe ]

Dew-drops, Nature's tears, which she
Sheds in her own breast for the fair which die.
The sun insists on gladness; but at night,
When he is gone, poor Nature loves to weep. [ Bailey ]

A poor man served by thee shall make thee rich. [ Mrs. Browning ]

Give what thou canst, without thee we are poor;
And with thee rich, take what thou wilt away. [ Cowper ]

Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law. [ Goldsmith ]

Plenty has made me poor; wealth makes wit waver. [ Ovid ]

The poor trying to imitate the powerful, perish. [ Phaedrus ]

Giving much to the poor increases a man's store. [ Proverb ]

Anger makes dull men witty, but keeps them poor. [ Bacon ]

It is a poor sport that is not worth the candle. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Read Homer once, and you can read no more,
For all books else appear so mean, so poor.
Verse will seem prose, but still persist to read,
And Homer will be all the books you need. [ John Sheffield ]

So work the honey-bees;
Creatures, that by a rule in nature teach
The art of order to a peopled kingdom.
They have a king and officers of sorts;
Where some, like magistrates, correct at home;
Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad;
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds;
Which pillage they, with merry march, bring home.
To the tent royal of their emperor;
Who, busied in his majesty, surveys
The singing masons building roofs of gold;
The civil citizens kneading up the honey;
The poor mechanic porters crowding in
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate;
The sad-ey'd justice, with his surly hum.
Delivering over to executors pale
The lazy yawning drone. [ William Shakespeare ]

Our purses shall be proud, our garments poor:
For 'tis the mind that makes the body rich;
And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds,
So honor peereth in the meanest habit. [ William Shakespeare ]

I am as poor as Job, my lord, but not so patient. [ William Shakespeare ]

Avarice is always poor, but poor by ber own fault. [ Johnson ]

No estate can make him rich that has a poor heart. [ Proverb ]

A woman in love is a very poor judge of character. [ Josiah Gilbert Holland (pseudonym Timothy Titcomb) ]

Oh, break, my heart! poor bankrupt, break at once!
To prison, eyes, never look on liberty!
Vile earth, to earth resign; end motion here;
And thou and Romeo press one heavy bier! [ William Shakespeare ]

Giving much to the poor doth enrich a man's store. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Great expectations are better than poor possession. [ Cervantes ]

There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls,
Doing more murders in this loathsome world.
Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell,
I sell thee poison, thou hast sold me none. [ William Shakespeare ]

Give a poor man sixpence, and not a bottle of wine. [ Proverb ]

What poor creatures we men are, when I think of it. [ Plaut ]

Ah, if the rich were rich as the poor fancy riches! [ Emerson ]

He is not poor who has the use of necessary things. [ Horace ]

He is so poor that he has not salt to his porridge. [ Proverb ]

Money, thou bane and bliss and source of woe,
Whence com'st thou, that thou art so fresh and fine?
I know thy parentage is base and low:
Man found thee poor and dirty in a mine. [ Herbert ]

Poor people are apt to think every body flouts them. [ Proverb ]

Gold, worse poison to men's souls,
Doing more murder in this loathsome world,
Than these poor compounds that thou may'st not sell. [ Shakespeare ]

The dainties of the great are the tears of the poor. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

A lamb is as dear to a poor man as an ox to the rich. [ Proverb ]

Wishes, at least, are the easy pleasures of the poor. [ Douglas Jerrold ]

Anger makes a rich man hated, and a poor man scorned. [ Proverb ]

In love, one who ceases to be rich begins to be poor. [ Chamfort ]

It is very pretty to see a poor man give to the rich. [ Proverb ]

An atheist-laugh's a poor exchange For Deity offended! [ Burns ]

A poor man has not many marks for Fortune to shoot at. [ Proverb ]

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls;
Who steals my purse steals trash;
'Tis something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name,
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed. [ William Shakespeare ]

The poor man has his corn destroyed by hail every year. [ Proverb ]

A poor man wants some things, a covetous man all things. [ Proverb ]

He had a prince's mind imprisoned in a poor man's purse. [ Fuller ]

Alas! innocence is but a poor substitute for experience. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

Rich men feel misfortunes that fly over poor men's heads. [ Proverb ]

A parson and a ring would make many a poor outcast a lord. [ S. Lover ]

Honesty is the poor man's pork and the rich man's pudding. [ Proverb ]

He is not poor that hath little, but he that desireth much. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Not he who has little, but he who wishes for more, is poor. [ Seneca ]

I never knew any man grow poor by keeping an orderly table. [ Lord Burleigh ]

Charity gives itself rich; covetousness hoards itself poor. [ German Proverb ]

He is not poor that hath not much, but he that craves much. [ Proverb ]

The poor man turns his cake, and another comes and eats it. [ Proverb ]

God save me from a poor fiddler who knows nothing of music. [ F. Geminiani ]

The poor ye have always with you, but me ye have not always. [ Jesus ]

It is a poor stake that cannot stand one year in the ground. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks, but I thank you. [ William Shakespeare ]

Charity and pride have different aims, yet both feed the poor. [ Proverb ]

Without economy none can be rich, and with it few can be poor. [ Johnson ]

He pities not the poor, who relieves them not, when he well may. [ Proverb ]

The pleasures of the rich are bought with the tears of the poor. [ Proverb ]

Better live in a poor hovel, than be buried in a rich sepulchre. [ Proverb ]

To be poor, and to seem poor, is a certain method never to rise. [ Goldsmith ]

It is the flash that murders; the poor thunder never harm'd head. [ Alfred Tennyson ]

Pride becomes not a rich man, but is insupportable in a poor man. [ Proverb ]

Those who are greedy of praise prove that they are poor in merit. [ Plutarch ]

The diamond, though small, is a heavy load for a poor man to carry. [ Ejik ]

The rich and poor meet together: the Lord is the maker of them all. [ Bible ]

It is but poor eloquence which only shows that the orator can talk. [ Sir Joshua Reynolds ]

Whatever is given to the poor, is laid out of the reach of fortune. [ Proverb ]

The miser is poor to the extent of all that he has not yet acquired.

I'd find the fellow who lost it, and, if he was poor, I'd return it. [ Yogi Berra, when asked what he would do if he found a million dollars ]

Better be a poor fisherman than have to do with the governing of men. [ Danton ]

Can eternity belong to me, poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour? [ Young ]

Vexed sailors curse the rain for which poor shepherds prayed in vain. [ Waller ]

Science lives only in quiet places, and with odd people, mostly poor. [ John Ruskin ]

Wine makes a poor man rich in imagination, a rich man poor in reality. [ Edward Parsons Day ]

Poor men may think well, but rich men may both think well and do well. [ Proverb ]

Poor men seek meat for their stomach, rich men stomach for their meat. [ Proverb ]

If a poor man give you something, you should give him something better. [ Proverb ]

The miser, poor fool, not only starves his body, but also his own soul. [ Theodore Parker ]

Education is a capital to the poor man, and an interest to the rich man. [ Horace Mann ]

Better be poor and live safe at land, than be rich and perish in the sea. [ Proverb ]

Alas! poor human nature, pity, if hard pressed, degenerates into contempt. [ J. G. Saxe ]

Sympathy is the solace of the poor, but for the rich there is consolation. [ Benjamin Disraeli ]

I am a fool, I know it; and yet, God help me, I'm poor enough to be a wit. [ Congreve ]

Fame at its best is but a poor compensation for all the ills of existence. [ Mrs. Oliphant ]

Much money makes a country poor, for it sets a dearer price on everything. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Make false hair, and thatch your poor thin roofs with burthens of the dead. [ William Shakespeare ]

To condemn the poor because of his poverty, is to affront God's providence. [ Proverb ]

It is, alas! the poor prerogative of greatness, to be wretched and unpitied. [ Congreve ]

We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse. [ Madame Swetchine ]

Pawnshop; originally store of money to lend without interest to poor people. [ French ]

The perfect love of God knoweth no difference between the poor and the rich. [ Pacuvius ]

If the poor man cannot always get meat, the rich man cannot always digest it. [ Henry Giles ]

Not all Apollo's Pythian treasures hold can bribe the poor possession of a day. [ Homer ]

Serve a noble disposition, though poor, the time comes that he will repay thee. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

The poor man's penny unjustly detained, is a coal of fire in a rich man's purse. [ Proverb ]

Imagination is but a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding. [ Carlyle ]

Gold is, in its last analysis, the sweat of the poor and the blood of the brave. [ Joseph Napoleon ]

I have a very poor opinion of a man who talks to men what women should not hear. [ Richardson ]

Look how the world's poor people are amazed at apparitions, signs and prodigies! [ William Shakespeare ]

He that is poor, all his kindred scorn him; he that is rich, all are kin to him. [ Proverb ]

Travel improves superior wine and spoils the poor; it is the same with the brain.

Neatness is an inheritance to which the poor can lay claim equally with the rich. [ H. Greenough ]

There is no human life so poor and small as not to hold many a divine possibility. [ James Martineau ]

A miser grows rich by seeming poor; an extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich. [ Shenstone ]

It is always a poor way of reading the hearts of others to try to conceal our own. [ Kousseau ]

There is a noble manner of being poor, and who does not know it will never be rich. [ Seneca ]

In the present day our literary masonry is well done, but our architecture is poor. [ Joubert ]

Every one is weary: the poor in seeking, the rich in keeping, the good in learning. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

We men are but poor, weak souls, after all; women beat us out and out in fortitude. [ Charles Buxton ]

Rich honesty dwells like a miser, in a poor house, as your pearl in your foul oyster. [ William Shakespeare ]

Put a poor man's penny and a rich man's penny into a purse, and they'll come out alike. [ Proverb ]

A poor man who aspires to ape the manners and habits of the rich, is sure to be ruined. [ Phaedrus ]

Oh, poor hearts of poets, eager for the infinite in love, will you never be understood. [ Mme. Louise Colet ]

There is no book so poor that it would not be a prodigy if wholly made by a single man. [ Johnson ]

He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand; but the hand of the diligent maketh rich. [ Bible ]

There is God's poor, and the devil's poor; the first from providence, the other from vice. [ Proverb ]

The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe, the poor roan's wealth, the prisoner's release. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

Reckon what is in a man, not what is on him, if you would know whether he is rich or poor. [ Ward Beecher ]

Pale death enters with impartial step the cottages of the poor and the palaces of the rich. [ Horace ]

There is a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft, to keep watch for the life of poor Jack. [ Dibdin ]

The rich are too indolent, the poor too weak, to bear the insupportable fatigue of thinking. [ Cowper ]

A man's real possession is his memory. In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor. [ Alexander Smith ]

Prayer is the dew of the soul ravaged by adversity, and oftentimes the only bread of the poor. [ A. Poincelot ]

Neatness, and its reverse, among the poor, are almost a certain test of their moral character. [ Dr. Whitaker ]

Young, one is rich in all the future that he dreams; old, one is poor in all the past he regrets. [ Rochepedre ]

The change of fashions is the tax that the industry of the poor levies on the vanity of the rich. [ Chamfort ]

Though men can cover crimes with bold, stern looks, poor women's faces are their own faults' books. [ William Shakespeare ]

He is rich whose income is more than his expenses; and he is poor whose expenses exceed his income. [ Bruyere ]

The only way for a rich man to be healthy is, by exercise and abstinence, to live as if he was poor. [ Sir W. Temple ]

He who serves the public is a poor animal; he worries himself to death and no one thanks him for it. [ Goethe ]

Let no man measure by a scale of perfection the meager product of reality in this poor world of ours. [ Schiller ]

What women would do if they could not cry, nobody knows. What poor defenceless creatures they would be! [ Douglas Jerrold ]

Childish, imbecile carelessness is enough to render any man poor, without the aid of a single positive vice. [ Francis Wayland ]

No man is rich whose expenditure exceeds his means; and no one is poor whose incomings exceed his outgoings. [ Haliburton ]

No man is rich whose expenditures exceed his means; and no one is poor whose incomings exceed his outgoings. [ Haliburton ]

He that by usury and unjust gain increaseth his substance, he shall gather it for him that will pity the poor. [ Bible ]

There is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing: there is that maketh himself poor, yet hath great riches. [ Bible ]

With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. [ Thoreau ]

Luxury possibly may contribute to give bread to the poor; but if there were no luxury, there would be no poor. [ H. Home ]

He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well with him: was not this to know me? saith the Lord. [ Bible ]

He that oppresseth the poor to increase his riches, and he that giveth to the rich, shall surely come to want. [ Bible ]

He who will not give some portion of his ease, his blood, his wealth, for others' good, is a poor frozen churl. [ Joanna Baillie ]

A poor spirit is poorer than a poor purse. A very few pounds a year would ease a man of the scandal of avarice. [ Swift ]

A forest of all manner of trees is poor, if not disagreeable, in effect; a mass of one species of tree is sublime. [ Ruskin ]

Poor in abundance, famished at a feast, man's grief is but his grandeur in disguise, and discontent is immortality. [ Young ]

With parsimony a little is sufficient, and without it nothing is sufficient, whereas frugality makes a poor man rich. [ Seneca ]

Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Since love teaches how to trick the tricksters, how much reason have we to fear it - we who are poor simple creatures! [ Marguerite de Valois ]

Codes are treacherous seas in which the poor barks of smugglers perish, while big corsairs traverse them under full sail. [ E. Souvestre ]

Adversity is a great schoolmistress, as many a poor fellow knows that has whimpered over his lesson before her awful chair. [ Thackeray ]

But yesterday the word of Caesar might Have stood against the world; now lies he there. And none so poor to do him reverence. [ William Shakespeare ]

The beloved of the Almighty are the rich who have the humility of the poor, and the poor who have the magnanimity of the rich. [ Saadi ]

The reason why education is usually so poor among women of fashion is that it is not needed for the life which they elect to lead. [ Julia Ward Howe ]

We are poor, indeed, when we have no half-wishes left us. The heart and the imagination close the shutters the instant they are gone. [ Landor ]

Wherever I find a great deal of gratitude in a poor man, I take it for granted there would be as much generosity if he were a rich man. [ Pope ]

In goodness, rich men should transcend the poor, as clouds the earth; raised by the comfort of the sun to water dry and barren grounds. [ Tourneur ]

A man who can, in cold blood, hunt and torture a poor, innocent animal, cannot feel much compassion for the distress of his own species. [ Frederick the Great ]

If my heart were as poor as my understanding, I should be happy; for I am thoroughly persuaded that such poverty is a means of salvation. [ Pascal ]

Poetry is music in words, and music is poetry in sound: both excellent sauce, but they have lived and died poor, that made them their meat. [ Fuller ]

If thou art rich, thou art poor; for, like an ass whose back with ingots bows, thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey, and death unloads thee. [ William Shakespeare ]

The greatest and most amiable privilege which the rich enjoy over the poor is that which they exercise the least, - the privilege of making them happy. [ Colton ]

No man is poor who does not think himself so. But if in a full fortune with impatience he desires more, he proclaims his wants and his beggarly condition. [ Jeremy Taylor ]

Few of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered, from the time of the seven sages of Greece to that of poor Richard, have prevented a single foolish action. [ Macaulay ]

All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince. [ Plato ]

If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed. We are bought by the enemy with the treasure in our own coffers. [ Burke ]

Charity feeds the poor, so does pride; charity builds an hospital, so does pride. In this they differ: charity gives her glory to God: pride takes her glory from man. [ Quarles ]

This poor world, the object of so much insane attachment, we are about to leave; it is but misery, vanity, and folly; a phantom - the very fashion of which passeth away. [ Fenelon ]

Who can look down upon the grave of an enemy, and not feel a compunctious throb that he should have warred with the poor handful of dust that lies mouldering before him? [ Washington Irving ]

Parsimony is enough to make the master of the golden mines as poor as he that has nothing; for a man may be brought to a morsel of bread by parsimony as well as profusion. [ Henry Home ]

Madness is consistent, which is more than can be said for poor reason. Our passions and principles are steady in frenzy, but begin to shift and waver as we return to reason. [ Sterne ]

It is not written, blessed is he that feedeth the poor, but he that considereth the poor. A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money. [ Ruskin ]

The greatest luxury of riches is that they enable you to escape so much good advice. The rich are always advising the poor; but the poor seldom venture to return the compliment. [ Sir Arthur Helps ]

Words are but poor interpreters in the realms of emotion. When all words end, music begins; when they suggest, it realises; and hence the secret of its strange, ineffable power. [ H. R. Haweis ]

Science has done much for us; but it is a poor science that would hide from us the great deep sacred infinitude of Nescience, on which all science swims as a mere superficial film. [ Carlyle ]

That rich man is great who thinketh not himself great because he is rich; the proud man (who is the poor man) braggeth outwardly but beggeth inwardly; he is blown up, but not full. [ S. Hieron ]

No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger. It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has. [ Beecher ]

Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all - the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved. [ Mark Twain's last words, written on a note by his death bed ]

The artist is the child in the popular fable, every one of whose tears was a pearl. Ah! the world, that cruel step-mother, beats the poor child the harder to make him shed more pearls. [ Heinrich Heine ]

If you were a poor Indian with no weapons, and a bunch of conquistadors came up to you and asked where the gold was, I don't think it would be a good idea to say, I swallowed it. So sue me. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

He is the rich man in whom the people are rich, and he is the poor man in whom the people are poor; and how to give access to the masterpieces of art and nature is the problem of civilisation. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Who has not seen how women bully women? What tortures have men to endure compared to those daily repeated shafts of scorn and cruelty with which poor women are riddled by the tyrants of their sex? [ Thackeray ]

The pilot who is always dreading a rock or a tempest must not complain if he remain a poor fisherman. We must at times trust something to fortune, for fortune has often some share in what happens. [ Metastasio ]

For my part, it is not the mystery of the incarnation which I discover in religion, but the mystery of social order, which associates with heaven that idea of equality which prevents the rich from destroying the poor. [ Napoleon I ]

Many shiver from want of defence against the cold; but there is vastly more suffering among the rich from absurd and criminal modes of dress, which fashion has sanctioned, than among the poor from deficiency of raiment. [ Channing ]

True, the poisonous breath of the world destroys our illusions, but they resuscitate at once when a ray of love falls upon our benumbed hearts, as the warmth of the sun revives the poor flowers withered by the ices of winter. [ De Finod ]

My first and last secret of Art is to get a thorough intelligence of the fact to be painted, represented, or, in whatever way, set forth - the fact deep as Hades, high as heaven, and written so, as to the visual face of it on this poor earth. [ Carlyle ]

How many who, after having achieved fame and fortune, recall with regret the time when - ascending the hills of life in the sun of their twentieth year - they had nothing but courage, which is the virtue of the young, and hope, which is the treasure of the poor! [ H. Murger ]

Nature's noblemen are everywhere, - in town and out of town, gloved and rough-handed, rich and poor. Prejudice against a lord, because he is a lord, is losing the chance of finding a good fellow, as much as prejudice against a ploughman because he is a ploughman. [ Willis ]

The first wealth is health. Sickness is poor-spirited, and cannot serve any one; it must husband its resources to live. But health or fullness answers its own ends, and has to spare, runs over, and inundates the neighborhoods and creeks of other men's necessities. [ Emerson ]

Without distinction, without calculation, without procrastination, love. Lavish it upon the poor, where it is very easy; especially upon the rich, who often need it most; most of all upon our equals, where it is very difficult, and for whom perhaps we each do least of all. [ Henry Drummond ]

Nothing is more estimable than a physician who, having studied nature from his youth, knows the properties of the human body, the diseases which assail it, the remedies which will benefit it, exercises his art with caution, and pays equal attention to the rich and the poor. [ Voltaire ]

The birds of the air die to sustain thee; the beasts of the field die to nourish thee; the fishes of the sea die to feed thee. Our stomachs are their common sepulchre. Good God! with how many deaths are our poor lives patched up! how full of death is the life of momentary man! [ Quarles ]

From the year 1789 to the year 1860 no nation has ever known a more unbounded prosperity, a fuller space of happiness. In the short space of seventy years, within the turn of a single life, the nation, poor, weak and despised, raised itself to the pinnacle of power and of glory. [ Robert C. Winthrop ]

Civilized society feels that manners are of more importance than morals, and the highest respectability is of less value than the possession of a good chef. Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for cold entrees, nor an irreproachable private life for a bad dinner and poor wines. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]

My May of life is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf; and that which should accompany old age, as honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have; but in their stead, curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath which the poor heart would fain deny and dare not. [ William Shakespeare ]

A fiction which is designed to inculcate an object wholly alien to the imagination sins against the first law of art; and if a writer of fiction narrow his scope to particulars so positive as polemical controversy in matters ecclesiastical, political or moral, his work may or may not be an able treatise, but it must be a very poor novel. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

The little flower which sprung up through the hard pavement of poor Picciola's prison was beautiful from contrast with the dreary sterility which surrounded it. So here amid rough walls, are there fresh tokens of nature. And O, the beautiful lessons which flowers teach to children, especially in the city! The child's mind can grasp with ease the delicate suggestions of flowers. [ Chapin ]

The little flower which sprung up through the hard payment of poor Picciola's prison, was beautiful from contrast with the dreary sterility which surrounded it. So here, amid the rough walls, are there fresh tokens of nature; and oh, the beautiful lessons which flowers teach to children, especially in the city! The child's mind can grasp with ease the delicate suggestions of flowers. [ E. H. Chapin ]

Society is but the contest of a thousand little opposite interests - an eternal contest between all the vanities that clash with each other, wounded, humiliated the one by the other, and which expiate tomorrow in the disgust of a defeat the triumph of today. To live in solitude, to avoid being crushed in the surging throng, is what the world calls being a nonentity - to have no existence. Poor, miserable humanity! [ Chamfort ]

The little I have seen of the world teaches me to look upon the errors of others in sorrow, not in anger. When I take the history of one poor heart that has sinned and suffered, and represent to myself the struggles and temptations it has passed through, the brief pulsations of joy, the feverish inquietude of hope and fear, the pressure of want, the desertion of friends. I would fain leave the erring soul of my fellowman with Him from whose hand it came. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

As the index tells us the contents of stories and directs to the particular chapter, even so does the outward habit and superficial order of garments (in man or woman) give us a taste of the spirit, and demonstratively point (as it were a manual note from the margin) all the internal quality of the soul; and there cannot be a more evident, palpable, gross manifestation of poor, degenerate, dunghilly blood and breeding than a rude, unpolished, disordered, and slovenly outside. [ Massinger ]

It is to be hoped that, with all the modern improvements, a mode will be discovered of getting rid of bores: for it is too bad that a poor wretch can be punished for stealing your pocket handkerchief or gloves, and that no punishment can be inflicted on those who steal your time, and with it your temper and patience, as well as the bright thoughts that might have entered into your mind (like the Irishman who lost the fortune before he had got it), but were frightened away by the bore. [ Byron ]

Though no participator in the joys of more vehement sport, I have a pleasure that I cannot reconcile to my abstract notions of the tenderness due to dumb creatures, in the tranquil cruelty of angling. I can only palliate the wanton destructiveness of my amusement by trying to assure myself that my pleasure does not spring from the success of the treachery I practice toward a poor little fish, but rather from that innocent revelry in the luxuriance of summer life which only anglers enjoy to the utmost. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]

Always the idea of unbroken quiet broods around the grave. It is a port where the storms of life never beat, and the forms that have been tossed on its chafing waves lie quiet forever more. There the child nestles as peacefully as ever it lay in its mother's arms, and the workman's hands lie still by his side, and the thinker's brain is pillowed in silent mystery, and the poor girl's broken heart is steeped in a balm that extracts its secret woe, and is in the keeping of a charity that covers all blame. [ Chapin ]

Two things a master commits to his servant's care - the child and the child's clothes. It will be a poor excuse for the servant to say, at his master's return, Sir, here are all the child's clothes, neat and clean, but the child is lost. Much so of the account that many will give to God of their souls and bodies at the great day. Lord, here is my body; I am very grateful for it; I neglected nothing that belonged to its contents and welfare; but as for my soul, that is lost and cast away forever. I took little care and thought about it. [ John Flavel ]

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their soul into ours. God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers; they give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live. [ W. E. Channing ]

Morals are an acquirement - like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis - no man is born with them. I wasn't myself, I started poor. I hadn't a single moral. There is hardly a man in this house that is poorer than I was then. Yes, I started like that - the world before me, not a moral in the slot. Not even an insurance moral. I can remember the first one I ever got. I can remember the landscape, the weather, the - I can remember how everything looked. It was an old moral, an old second-hand moral, all out of repair, and didn't fit, anyway. But if you are careful with a thing like that, and keep it in a dry place, and save it for processions, and Chautauquas, and World's Fairs, and so on, and disinfect it now and then, and give it a fresh coat of whitewash once in a while, you will be surprised to see how well she will last and how long she will keep sweet, or at least inoffensive. When I got that mouldy old moral, she had stopped growing, because she hadn't any exercise; but I worked her hard, I worked her Sundays and all. Under this cultivation she waxed in might and stature beyond belief, and served me well and was my pride and joy for sixty-three years; then she got to associating with insurance presidents, and lost flesh and character, and was a sorrow to look at and no longer competent for business. She was a great loss to me. Yet not all loss. I sold her - ah, pathetic skeleton, as she was - I sold her to Leopold, the pirate King of Belgium; he sold her to our Metropolitan Museum, and it was very glad to get her, for without a rag on, she stands 57 feet long and 16 feet high, and they think she's a brontosaur. Well, she looks it. They believe it will take nineteen geological periods to breed her match. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]

poor in Scrabble®

The word poor is playable in Scrabble®, no blanks required.

Scrabble® Letter Score: 6

Highest Scoring Scrabble® Play In The Letters poor:

POOR
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All Scrabble® Plays For The Word poor

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The 32 Highest Scoring Scrabble® Plays For Words Using The Letters In poor

POOR
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poor in Words With Friends™

The word poor is playable in Words With Friends™, no blanks required.

Words With Friends™ Letter Score: 7

Highest Scoring Words With Friends™ Play In The Letters poor:

POOR
(45)
 

All Words With Friends™ Plays For The Word poor

POOR
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POOR
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The 35 Highest Scoring Words With Friends™ Plays Using The Letters In poor

POOR
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Words within the letters of poor

2 letter words in poor (1 word)

4 letter words in poor (1 word)

poor + 1 blank (5 words)

Words containing the sequence poor

Words that end with poor (2 words)

Word Growth involving poor

Shorter words in poor

or

Longer words containing poor

poorer

poorest

poorhouse poorhouses

poorly

poorness

poorspirited

spoor spoored

spoor spooring

spoor spoors

whipoorwill whipoorwills

whippoorwill whippoorwills