“When the disciples asked Jesus who was greatest in the kingdom of heaven, he set a little child in the midst of them. … By the "poor in spirit," therefore, I understand our Lord to mean those who retain the spirit of little children, for little children are they of whom he said, "of such is the kingdom," in which they who are most childlike are greatest.Childlike men are the antipodes of the crawling creatures we call "poor spirited;" the men of expediencies and policies, who are sharp-eyed along the low horizons of earth.”

Source: Heaven Revealed (Moody, 2011), p. 64

4:2
Church Dogmatics (1932–1968)

On the Sermon on the Mount, as translated by William Findlay (1888), Book I, Ch. 1
Context: What, then, does He say? "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." We read in Scripture concerning the striving after temporal things, "All is vanity and presumption of spirit"; but presumption of spirit means audacity and pride: usually also the proud are said to have great spirits; and rightly, inasmuch as the wind also is called spirit. And hence it is written, "Fire, hail, snow, ice, spirit of tempest." But, indeed, who does not know that the proud are spoken of as puffed up, as if swelled out with wind? And hence also that expression of the apostle, "Knowledge puffs up, but charity edifies". And the poor in spirit are rightly understood here, as meaning the humble and God-fearing, i. e. those who have not the spirit which puffs up. Nor ought blessedness to begin at any other point whatever, if indeed it is to attain unto the highest wisdom; "but the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom"; for, on the other hand also, "pride" is entitled "the beginning of all sin." Let the proud, therefore, seek after and love the kingdoms of the earth; but "blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 332.

The Sacred Pipe (1953)

1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Context: Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us. I ask nothing of the nation except that it so behave as each farmer here behaves with reference to his own children. That farmer is a poor creature who skins the land and leaves it worthless to his children. The farmer is a good farmer who, having enabled the land to support himself and to provide for the education of his children, leaves it to them a little better than he found it himself. I believe the same thing of a nation.

Source: On the Bondage of the Will (1525), p. 241, 253

Source: Froi of the Exiles

Source: The Poisonwood Bible