“Not to have a thing is less humiliating than to beg it.”

— Ali , book Nahj al-Balagha

Nahj al-Balagha

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update April 28, 2025. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Not to have a thing is less humiliating than to beg it." by Ali?

Ali 124

cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad 601–661

Related quotes

“All lovely things will have an ending,
All lovely things will fade and die,
And youth, that's now so bravely spending,
Will beg a penny by and by.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

All Lovely Things (1916)

“Identity is much less a thing people "inherit" than it used to be.”

Barry Schwartz book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

The Paradox of Choice (2004)

“I have hinted that what people are afraid of in democracy is less the thing itself than what they conceive to be its necessary adjuncts and consequences.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

On Democracy (6 October 1884)
Context: I have hinted that what people are afraid of in democracy is less the thing itself than what they conceive to be its necessary adjuncts and consequences. It is supposed to reduce all mankind to a dead level of mediocrity in character and culture, to vulgarize men's conceptions of life, and therefore their code of morals, manners, and conduct — to endanger the rights of property and possession. But I believe that the real gravamen of the charges lies in the habit it has of making itself generally disagreeable by asking the Powers that Be at the most inconvenient moment whether they are the powers that ought to be. If the powers that be are in a condition to give a satisfactory answer to this inevitable question, they need feel in no way discomfited by it.