Poverty is no sin. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Poverty is querulous. [ Proverb ]
Poverty tries friends. [ Proverb ]
Patience with poverty
Is a poor man's remedy.
Poverty breaks covenants. [ Proverb ]
And plenty makes us poor. [ Dryden ]
Debt is the worst poverty. [ Proverb ]
Poverty is the sixth sense. [ German Proverb ]
Whose plenty made him poor. [ Spenser ]
Sloth is the key to poverty. [ German Proverb ]
Poverty makes men ridiculous. [ Proverb ]
Poverty is a friend to health. [ Proverb ]
Poverty is an evil counseller. [ Proverb ]
To have nothing is not poverty. [ Martial ]
Poverty makes men poor spirited. [ Proverb ]
Poverty is the mother of health. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
The poor man's wisdom is despised. [ South ]
Love and poverty are hard to hide. [ Proverb ]
Poverty is a complication of evils. [ Proverb ]
Riches breed care, poverty is safe. [ Danish Proverb ]
O God! that bread should be so dear,
And flesh and blood so cheap! [ Hood ]
Poverty is the stepmother of genius. [ H. W. Shaw ]
Rattle his bones over the stones!
He's only a pauper whom nobody owns. [ Thomas Noel ]
Bear wealth, poverty will bear itself. [ Proverb ]
Few, save the poor, feel for the poor. [ L. E. Landon ]
My poverty, but not my will, consents. [ William Shakespeare ]
Steeped me in poverty to the very lips. [ William Shakespeare ]
But to the world no bugbear is so great,
As want of figure and a small estate. [ Pope ]
Poverty and wealth are comparative sins. [ Victor Hugo ]
Great wits to madness nearly are allied;
Both serve to make our poverty our pride. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Wisdom adorns riches, and shadows poverty. [ Socrates ]
Poverty is shamefully borne by a sluggard. [ Proverb ]
Love not sleep, lest thou come to poverty. [ Bible ]
They say, poor suitors have strong breaths. [ William Shakespeare ]
Where penury is felt the thought is chained.
And sweet colloquial pleasures are but few. [ Cowper ]
Nothing to be got without pains but poverty. [ Proverb ]
Not to understand a treasure's worth,
Till time has stolen away the slightest good,
Is cause of half the poverty we feel,
And makes the world the wilderness it is. [ Cowper ]
Content with poverty, my soul I arm;
And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm. [ Dryden after Hor ]
There is nothing perfectly secure but poverty. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
Wisdom deprives even poverty of half its power. [ H. W. Shaw ]
Poverty on an old man's back is a heavy burden. [ Proverb ]
Poverty and hunger have many learned disciples. [ German Proverb ]
O happiness of blindness! now no beauty
Inflames my lust; no other's goods my envy,
Or misery my pity; no man's wealth
Draws my respect; nor poverty my scorn,
Yet still I see enough! man to himself
Is a large prospect, raised above the level
Of his low creeping thoughts; if then I have
A world within myself, that world shall be
My empire; there I'll reign, commanding freely,
And willingly obeyed, secure from fear
Of foreign forces, or domestic treasons. [ Denham ]
He bears poverty very ill who is ashamed of it. [ Proverb ]
Riches may at any time be left, but not poverty. [ Proverb ]
The poor trying to imitate the powerful, perish. [ Phaedrus ]
If we from wealth to poverty descend,
Want gives to know the flatterer from the friend. [ Dryden ]
I am as poor as Job, my lord, but not so patient. [ William Shakespeare ]
Poverty is relative, and, therefore, not ignoble. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
As society advances the standard of poverty rises. [ Theodore Parker ]
Poverty of the soul is worse than that of fortune. [ Mme. de Lambert ]
Oh! liberty, thou goddess, heavenly bright.
Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight!
Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign.
And smiling plenty, leads thy wanton train;
Eased of her load, subjection grows more light
And poverty looks cheerful in the sight;
Thou makest the gloomy face of nature gay,
Giv'st beauty to the sun, and pleasure to the day. [ Addison ]
Poverty is crafty; it outwits (catches) even a fox. [ German Proverb ]
Republics end with luxury: monarchies with poverty. [ Montesquieu ]
He is not poor who has the use of necessary things. [ Horace ]
The drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty. [ Prov. 23: 21 ]
The inevitable consequence of poverty is dependence. [ Johnson ]
We all live here in a state of ostentatious poverty. [ Juv ]
The way from poverty to virtue is an obstructed one. [ Proverb ]
Poverty snatches the reins out of the hand of piety. [ Saadi ]
The worst part of poverty, is to bear it impatiently. [ Proverb ]
He's an excellent man that can wear poverty decently. [ Proverb ]
Poverty with honour is better than ill-gotten wealth. [ Proverb ]
The first approach to riches is security from poverty. [ Johnson ]
Poverty often deprives a man of all spirit and virtue. [ Benjamin Franklin ]
Pride and poverty are ill met, yet often seen together. [ Proverb ]
Poverty is not a shame, but the being ashamed of it is. [ Proverb ]
The traveler without money will sing before the robber. [ Juvenal ]
Neither great poverty nor great riches will hear reason. [ Fielding ]
Poverty wants some, luxury many, and avarice all things. [ Cowley ]
He had a prince's mind imprisoned in a poor man's purse. [ Fuller ]
Prudence is not poverty; it is the thorny road to wealth. [ Charles Reade ]
Riches exclude only one inconvenience - that is, poverty. [ Dr. Johnson ]
Poverty is the greatest calamity, riches the highest good. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Contentment is natural wealth; luxury, artificial poverty. [ Socrates ]
A man guilty of poverty easily believes himself suspected. [ Johnson ]
Not he who has little, but he who wishes for more, is poor. [ Seneca ]
Riches come better after poverty than poverty after riches. [ Chinese Proverb ]
There is more poverty in the human heart than misery in life. [ E. de Girardin ]
Idleness travels very slowly, and poverty soon overtakes her. [ Hunter ]
It is astonishing how little one feels poverty when one loves. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]
It is unmistakable madness to live in poverty only to die rich. [ Juvenal ]
To be poor, and to seem poor, is a certain method never to rise. [ Goldsmith ]
Poverty is the test of civility and the touchstone of friendship. [ Hazlitt ]
When poverty comes in at the door, love creeps out at the window. [ Proverb ]
Genius may be almost defined as the faculty of acquiring poverty. [ Whipple ]
Riches without law are more dangerous than is poverty without law. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]
Gravity is a stratagem invented to conceal the poverty of the mind. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Poverty treads close upon the heels of great and unexpected wealth. [ Rivarol ]
Republics come to an end by luxurious habits; monarchies by poverty. [ Montesquieu ]
If poverty is the mother of crimes, want of sense is the father of them. [ Bruyere ]
The greatest hardship of poverty is that it tends to make men ridiculous. [ Juvenal ]
They do not easily rise whose abilities are repressed by poverty at home. [ Juvenal ]
Pride breakfasted with Plenty, dined with Poverty, and supped with Infamy. [ Benjamin Franklin ]
Poverty destroys pride. It is difficult for an empty bag to stand upright. [ A. Dumas fils ]
To condemn the poor because of his poverty, is to affront God's providence. [ Proverb ]
We have luxury and avarice, but as a people poverty, and in private opulence. [ Cato in Sall ]
It is poverty of spirit that God delights in - poverty, and not beggarliness. [ Claudius ]
All affectation is the vain and ridiculous attempt of poverty to appear rich. [ Lavater ]
The poverty which oppresses a great people is a grievous and intolerable evil.
Borrowed thoughts, like borrowed money, only show the poverty of the borrower. [ Lady Blessington ]
Through tattered clothes small vices do appear; robes and furred gowns hide all. [ William Shakespeare ]
We think poverty to be infinitely desirable before the torments of covetousness. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
The rich know not how hard it is to be of needful rest and needful food debarred. [ L. E. Landon ]
The want of goods is easily repaired, but the poverty of the soul is irreparable. [ Montaigne ]
The whole world is put in motion by the wish for riches and the dread of poverty. [ Dr. Johnson ]
He travels safe and not unpleasantly who is guarded by poverty and guided by love. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
Rarely they rise by virtue's aid who lie plunged in the depth of helpless poverty. [ Juvenal ]
The dreariest poverty is that of the heart; banish this, and we shall all be rich. [ Bovee ]
The lack of wealth is easily repaired; but the poverty of the soul is irreparable. [ Montaigne ]
His wit run him out of his money, and now his poverty has run him out of his wits. [ Congreve ]
There is a noble manner of being poor, and who does not know it will never be rich. [ Seneca ]
This mournful truth is everywhere confessed. Slow rises worth by poverty depressed. [ Dr. Johnson ]
The good are joyful in the midst of poverty; but the wicked are sad in great riches. [ Proverb ]
The wealth of a soul is measured by how much it can feel; its poverty, by how little. [ W. K, Alger ]
The profession of riches without their possession leads to the worst form of poverty. [ Spurgeon ]
Not easily do those attain to distinction whose abilities are cramped by domestic poverty. [ Juv ]
Who loves the golden mean is safe from the poverty of a tenement, is free from the envy of a palace. [ Horace ]
It does not depend upon us to avoid poverty, but it does depend upon us to make that poverty respected. [ Voltaire ]
I confess I could never see any good reason why dirt should always be a necessary concomitant of poverty. [ W. G. Clark ]
It is an art without art, which has its beginning in falsehood, its middle in toil, and its end in poverty. [ From the Latin ]
In the indications of female poverty there can be no disguise. No woman dresses below herself from caprice. [ Lamb ]
Who can speak broader than he that has no house to put his head in? - Such may rail against great buildings. [ William Shakespeare ]
To close the eyes, and give a seemly comfort to the apparel of the dead, is poverty's holiest touch of nature. [ Dickens ]
Seneca devoted much of his time to writing essays in praise of poverty, and in lending money at usurious rates. [ H. W. Shaw ]
Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities. [ Dr. Johnson ]
When poverty and sickness come upon us, with no prospect of succor or relief, then we feel the pangs of our necessity. [ Gerard Guerin ]
Genius in poverty is never feared, because Nature, though liberal in her gifts in one instance, is forgetful in another. [ B. R. Haydon ]
There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth: and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty. [ Bible ]
Want of prudence is too frequently the want of virtue; nor is there on earth a more powerful advocate for vice than poverty. [ Goldsmith ]
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 ]
Wherever there is excessive wealth, there is also in the train of it excessive poverty; as where the sun is brightest the shade is deepest. [ Lander ]
A rich man cannot enjoy a sound mind nor a sound body without exercise and abstinence; and yet these are truly the worst ingredients of poverty. [ Lord Kames ]
You who are ashamed of your poverty, and blush for your calling, are a snob; as are you who boast of your pedigree, or are proud of your wealth. [ Thackeray ]
Drinking of wine brings poverty, shame, quarrels; leads to calumnious talk, unchastity, murder, and the loss of freedom, of honor, of understanding. [ Tosafot ]
There are a sort of friends, who in your poverty do nothing but torment and taunt you with accounts of what you might have been had you followed their advice. [ Zimmerman ]
Riches are gotten with pain, kept with care, and lost with grief. The cares of riches lie heavier upon a good man than the inconveniences of an honest poverty. [ L'Estrange ]
It may be remarked for the comfort of honest poverty that avarice reigns most in those who have but few good qualities to recommend them. This is a weed that will grow in a barren soil. [ Hughes ]
It is the care of a very great part of mankind to conceal their indigence from the rest. They support themselves by temporary expedients, and every day is lost in contriving for tomorrow. [ Johnson ]
Poverty breeds wealth; and wealth in its turn breeds poverty. The earth, to form the mould, is taken out of the ditch; and whatever may be the height of the one will be the depth of the other. [ J. C. and A. W. Hare ]
Those who despise fame seldom deserve it. We are apt to undervalue the purchase we cannot reach, to conceal our poverty the better. It is a spark which kindles upon the best fuel, and burns brightest in the bravest breast. [ Jeremy Collier ]
A miser is sometimes a grand personification of fear. He has a fine horror of poverty; and he is not content to keep want from the door, or at arm's length, but he places it, by heaping wealth upon wealth, at a sublime distance! [ Lamb ]
He that has no resources of mind, is more to be pitied than he who is in want of necessaries for the body; and to be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others, bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread. [ Colton ]
To die, and thus avoid poverty or love, or anything painful, is not the part of a brave man, but rather of a coward; for it is cowardice to avoid trouble, and the suicide does not undergo death because it is honorable, but in order to avoid evil. [ Aristotle ]
Biography, especially the biography of the great and good, who have risen by their own exertions from poverty and obscurity to eminence and usefulness, is an inspiring and ennobling study. Its direct tendency is to reproduce the excellence it records. [ Horace Mann ]
Eyes speak all languages; wait for no letter of introduction; they ask no leave of age or rank; they respect neither poverty nor riches, neither learning, nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude and come again, and go through and through you in a moment of time. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Health is certainly more valuable than money; because it is by health that money is procured; but thousands and millions are of small avail to alleviate the protracted tortures of the gout, to repair the broken organs of sense, or resuscitate the powers of digestion. Poverty is, indeed, an evil from which we naturally fly, but let us not run from one enemy to another, nor take shelter in the arms of sickness. [ Johnson ]
Eyes are bold as lions, roving, running, leaping, here and there, far and near. They speak all languages; they wait for no introduction; they are no Englishmen; ask no leave of age or rank; they respect neither poverty nor riches, neither learning nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude, and come again, and go through and through you in a moment of time. What inundation of life and thought is discharged from one soul into another through them! [ Emerson ]
I was walking in the street, a beggar stopped me, — a frail old man. His inflamed, tearful eyes, blue lips, rough rags, disgusting sores . . . oh, how horribly poverty had disfigured the unhappy creature! He stretched out to me his red, swollen, filthy hand. He groaned and whimpered for alms. I felt in all my pockets. No purse, watch, or handkerchief did I find. I had left them all at home. The beggar waited and his out-stretched hand twitched and trembled slightly. Embarrassed and confused, I seized his dirty hand and pressed it. Don't be vexed with me, brother; I have nothing with me, brother.
The beggar raised his bloodshot eyes to mine; his blue lips smiled, and he returned the pressure of my chilled fingers. Never mind, brother,
stammered he; thank you for this — this, too, was a gift, brother.
I felt that I, too, had received a gift from my brother. [ Ivan Tourgueneff ]