Home / Topics / Poverty Quotes

Poverty Quotes

Browse 6296 quotes about Poverty.

Poverty Quotes

“Morality and religion are but words to him who fishes in gutters for the means of sustaining life, and crouches behind barrels in the street for shelter from the cutting blasts of a winter night.”

Mean Night Behinds Poverty Cutting Streets Morality Ethics Winter Fishes Shelter Blast Barrels Sustaining Gutters Morality And Religion Winter Night Sustaining Life

Author:Horace Greeley

“When an ecstatic is asked the question, What is it that love dares the self to do? she will answer: Love dares the self to leave itself behind, to enter into poverty.”

Self Answers Behinds Poverty Dare Ecstatic Love Dare

Author:Anne Carson

“Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, of sickness, or captivity, would, without this comfort, be insupportable; nor does it appear that the happiest lot of terrestrial existence can set us above the want of this general blessing; or that life, when the gifts of nature and of fortune are accumulated upon it, would not still be wretched, were it not elevated and delighted by the expectation of some new possession, of some enjoyment yet behind, by which the wish shall at last be satisfied, and the heart filled up to its utmost extent.”

Source: The Beauties of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Consisting of Maxims and Observations, Moral, Critical, and Miscellaneous : to which are Now Added, Biographical Anecdotes of the Doctor, Selected from the Works of Mrs. Piozzi, His Life, Recently Published by Mr. Boswell, and Other Authentic Testimonies : Also His Will, and the Sermon He Wrote for the Late Doctor Dodd

“It's like a convent, the hospital. You leave the world behind and take vows of poverty, chastity, obedience.”

World Behinds Poverty Illness Obedience Hospitals Vow Chastity

Author:Carolyn Wheat

“Lord God, I thank Thee that Thou hast been pleased to make me a poor and indigent man upon earth. I have neither house nor land nor money, to leave behind me. Thou hast given me wife and children, whom I now restore to Thee. Lord, nourish, teach, and preserve them as Thou hast me.”

Men Children Earth House Given Poor Behinds Lord Poverty Teach Wife Land Thee Preserves Lord God

Author:Martin Luther

“Haiti is the kind of place that grabs your heart, and never lets go ... When you arrive in Port-au-Prince, the first thing that strikes you is how vibrant the colors are. Buses, buildings, fences, clothing, everything is brightly painted in primary hues. On closer inspection, you see the reality behind this brightly colored landscape: a dark, grinding poverty, the worst in the Western hemisphere.”

“There was the murdered corpse, in covert laid, And violent death in thousand shapes displayed; The city to the soldier's rage resigned; Successless wars, and poverty behind; Ships burnt in fight, or forced on rocky shores, And the rash hunter strangled by the boars; The newborn babe by nurses overlaid; And the cook caught within the raging fire he made.”

Made War Death Fighting Cities Behinds Poverty Fire Thousand Shapes Murder Soldier Caught Rage Violent Ships Cooks Shore Nurse Hunters Corpses Babe Newborn Resigned Covert Violent Death Boars

Book:Palamon and Arcite

Source: Palamon and Arcite

“I learn immediately from any speaker how much he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his speech. Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and copestones for the masonry of today. This is the way to learn grammar. Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the work-yard made.”

Source: Essays and English Traits by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The next most dangerous thing [after nuclear proliferation] is probably... global warming, and then, right behind that are overpopulation -- we need to get serious about family planning-and trying to alleviate poverty, to get clean, renewable energy, probably with solar panels to the billion and a half people in the world who don't have access to electricity.”

“Love dares the self to leave itself behind, to enter into poverty.”

Self Behinds Poverty Dare Love Dare

Author:Anne Carson

“California, because of their Equity Funding Formula, moves a step in that direction by sending more resources to communities and students that face greater levels of poverty. But California is doing that from a greater position of real weakness, because they were already so far behind other states in funding per student. It’s a step, but many more steps need to be taken.”

Needs Real States Faces Moving Community Levels Behinds Steps Poverty Taken Greater Position Students Weakness Resources California Formulas Equity Funding

Author:Pedro Noguera

“When you look at what [new generation] believe in, how they value diversity, how they believe in science, how they care about the environment, how they believe in, you know, everybody getting a fair shot, how they believe in not discriminating against people for sexual orientation and you know, their belief that we have to work with other countries to create a more peaceful world and to alleviate poverty, that's the majority an entire generation that's coming up behind us.”

“Not afraid of poverty and drabness and who is untouched by it, untouched by the drunkenness of her friends; (she) who judges, selects, discards people with severity, who knows, when she is telling her endless anecdotes, that they are ways of escape, keeping herself all the more secret behind that profuse talk.”

People Knows Way Secret Behinds Poverty Judging Endless Not Afraid Drunkenness Anecdotes Severity

Author:Anais Nin

“A leader. . .is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.”

“Here the whole world (stars, water, air, And field, and forest, as they were Reflected in a single mind) Like cast off clothes was left behind In ashes, yet with hopes that she, Re-born from holy poverty, In lenten lands, hereafter may Resume them on her Easter Day." (Epitaph for Joy Gresham)”

World Mind May Whole Joy Left Stars Water Born Behinds Poverty Air Land Fields Holy Clothes Casts Whole World Forests Ashes Easter Rebirth Left Behind Hereafter Resumes Epitaph Easter Day Lenten

Author:C. S. Lewis