“Bitter poverty has no harder pang than that it makes men ridiculous.”

— Juvenal , book Satires

Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se,
quam quod ridiculos homines facit.
III, line 152-3.
Variant translations:
Of all the Griefs that harrass the Distrest,
Sure the most bitter is a scornful Jest.
As translated by Samuel Johnson
The hardest thing to bear in poverty is the fact that it makes men ridiculous.
Wretched poverty offers nothing harsher than this: it makes men ridiculous.
Satires, Satire III

Original

Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se, quam quod ridiculos homines facit.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 1, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Bitter poverty has no harder pang than that it makes men ridiculous." by Juvenal?

Juvenal 24

ancient roman poet 50

Related quotes

“Altars are trimmed, and the poor suffer the bitter pangs of hunger.”

Joachim of Fiore (1135–1202) Italian abbot

in Man on His Own (1970), p. 120

“Believe me, Being gay is not a choice. Noone would choose to make life harder than it has to be.”

Jodi Picoult book Sing You Home

Source: Sing You Home

“Lenin is an artist who has worked men, as other artists have worked marble or metals. But men are harder than stone and less malleable than iron. There is no masterpiece. The artist has failed. The task was superior to his capacities.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

Popolo d'Italia (14 July 1920) "The Artificer and the Material," quoted in Mussolini in the Making (1938) by Gaudens Megaro, p. 326
1920s

“The ancient bitter opposition to improved methods on the ancient theory that it more than temporarily deprives men of employment… has no place in the gospel of American progress.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

The New Day: Campaign Speeches of Herbert Hoover (1928)

“Grief and disappointment are like hate: they make men ugly with self-pity and bitterness. And how selfish they make us too.”

Graham Greene (1904–1991) English writer, playwright and literary critic

“Ridicule may be the evidence of wit or bitterness and may gratify a little mind, or an ungenerous temper, but it is no test of reason or truth.”

Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) American theologian

Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, p. 497.

“This freedom of which men speak, for which they fight, seems to some people a perilous thing. It has to be earned at a bitter cost and then — it has to be lived with. For freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Source: You Learn by Living (1960), p. 152
Context: "Anxiety," Kierkegaard said, "is the dizziness of freedom." This freedom of which men speak, for which they fight, seems to some people a perilous thing. It has to be earned at a bitter cost and then — it has to be lived with. For freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.
We must all face and unpalatable fact that we have, too often, a tendency to skim over; we proceed on the assumption that all men want freedom. This is not as true as we would like it to be. Many men and women who are far happier when they have relinquish their freedom, when someone else guides them, makes their decisions for them, takes the responsibility for them and their actions. They don't want to make up their minds. They don't want to stand on their own feet.