“It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.”
Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman
Attributed
“A poor wretch will readily believe whatever suits him.”
— Ludovico Ariosto, book Orlando Furioso
Il miser suole
Dar facile credenza a quel che vuole.
Canto I, stanza 56 (tr. G. Waldman)
Orlando Furioso (1532)
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Ludovico Ariosto97
Italian poet 1474–1533Related quotes
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Context: Spending the night out of doors has nothing attractive about it in London, especially for a poor, ragged, undernourished wretch. Moreover sleeping in the open is only allowed in one thoroughfare in London. If the policeman on his beat finds you asleep, it is his duty to wake you up. That is because it has been found that a sleeping man succumbs to the cold more easily than a man who is awake, and England could not let one of her sons die in the street. So you are at liberty to spend the night in the street, providing it is a sleepless night. But there is one road where the homeless are allowed to sleep. Strangely, it is the Thames Embankment, not far from the Houses of Parliament. We advise all those visitors to England who would like to see the reverse side of our apparent prosperity to go and look at those who habitually sleep on the Embankment, with their filthy tattered clothes, their bodies wasted by disease, a living reprimand to the Parliament in whose shadow they lie.
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Laconics, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "Like sending them ruffles, when wanting a shirt", Sorbienne (1610–1670); also used in Oliver Goldsmith, The Haunch of Venison. <br class="br">Source: Brown, Thomas, 1663-1704. Laconics, Or, New Maxims of State And Conversation: Relating to the Affairs And Manners of the Present Times : In Three Parts. London: Printed for Thomas Hodgson ..., 1701. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015013771368?urlappend=%3Bseq=117