“Poverty is spiritual halitosis.”

Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 5

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 30, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Poverty is spiritual halitosis." by George Orwell?
George Orwell photo
George Orwell 473
English author and journalist 1903–1950

Related quotes

Ingmar Bergman photo

“We went to morning services in variouis places and were deeply impressed by the spiritual poverty of these churches, by the lack of any congregation and the miserable spiritual status of the clergy, the poverty of their sermons, and the nonchalance and indifference of the ritual.”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

On Winter Light, Jonas Sima interview <!-- pages 173-174 -->
Bergman on Bergman (1970)
Context: We drove about, looking for churches, my father and I. My father, as you probably know, was a clergyman — he knew all the Uppland churches like the back of his hand. We went to morning services in variouis places and were deeply impressed by the spiritual poverty of these churches, by the lack of any congregation and the miserable spiritual status of the clergy, the poverty of their sermons, and the nonchalance and indifference of the ritual.
In one church, I remember — and I think it has a great deal to do with the end of the film — Father and I were sitting together. My father had already been retired for many years, and was old and frail.... Just before the bell begins to toll, we hear a car outside, a shining Volvo: the clergyman climbs out hurriedly, and there is a faint buzz from the vestry, and then the clergyman appears before he ought to — when the bell stops, that is — and says he feels very poorly and that he's talked to the rector and the rector has said he can use an abbrviated form of the service and drop the part at the altar. So there would be just one psalm and a sermon and another psalm. And goes out. Whereon my father, furious, began hammering on the pew, got to his feet and marched out into the vestry, where a long mumbled conversation ensued; after which the churchwarden also went in, then someone ran up the organ gallery to fetch the organist, after which the churchwarden came out and announced that there would be a complete service after all. My father took the service at the altar, but at the beginning and the end.
In some way I feel the end of the play was influenced by my father's intervention — that at all costs one must do what it is one's duty to do, particularly in spiritual contexts. Even if it can seem meaningless.

H.L. Mencken photo

“Poverty is a soft pedal upon the branches of human activity, not excepting the spiritual.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Source: 1910s, A Book of Prefaces (1917), Ch. 4

Frank Lloyd Wright photo

“The petty bias of personal taste can no longer hide either excrescence or spiritual poverty in the name of style.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

A Testament (1957)

Henry Scott Holland photo
Ronald Reagan photo

“Liberals fought poverty and poverty won.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

As quoted in The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America (2004) by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, p. 10
Post-presidency (1989&ndash;2004)

Benjamin Mkapa photo

“There is a thought that poverty is a public policy failure; poverty is man-made by action and non-action: poverty can be eliminated.”

Benjamin Mkapa (1938) Tanzanian politician and former president

2008-05-17 http://ippmedia.com/ipp/guardian/2008/05/17/114573.html
2008

Peter Akinola photo

“I didn’t create poverty. This church didn’t create poverty. Poverty is not an issue, human suffering is not an issue at all, they were there before the creation of mankind.”

Peter Akinola (1944) Anglican Primate of the Church of Nigeria

Reported in the East African Standard January 2004, now only available online here http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/archives/000985.html.

Related topics