22 September 1830.
Table Talk (1821–1834)
Context: A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket: let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection; and trust more to your imagination than to your memory.
“Men who borrow their Opinions can never repay their Debts. They are Beggars by Nature, and can therefore never get a Stock to grow rich upon.”
Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections
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George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax 65
English politician 1633–1695Related quotes
“Men seem to be born with a debt they can never pay no matter how hard they try.”
Source: Sweet Thursday
Speech to students at Cambridge University (4 December 1857)
Context: People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger now and then with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause and cause the spirit to waver and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.
“There can be no freedom or beauty about a home life that depends on borrowing and debt.”
Torvald Helmer, Act I
A Doll's House (1879)
“Now was not a good time, but we didn't often get to chose the time to repay our debts.”
Source: Magic Burns
[Scribner's Magazine, 1937, CII, 6, 19-21, I'm Not the Budget Type, Will Cuppy, http://www.unz.org/Pub/Scribners-1937dec-00019, PDF] Retrieved on June 25, 2012.
“961. Beggars and Borrowers must be no Chusers.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)