“"Choosers will be beggars if the begging’s not their choosing," said the Dog.”
Source: Old Kingdom series (The Abhorsen Trilogy), Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr (2001), p. 398.
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Garth Nix 88
Australian fantasy writer 1963Related quotes
“Beggars should be no choosers.”
Part I, chapter 10.
Proverbs (1546), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“We must not be beggars. Why should we beg? We have something to offer.”
During an interview with The New York Times reporter, Kevin Rafferty in October 1976.
[10 October 1976, http://ziaarchive.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/economic-hope-for-bangladesh.pdf, Economic Hope For Bangladesh, 2010-11-19]
“If they let me choose between you and the dog, I'll choose the dog.”
45 Antigonus I
Apophthegms of Kings and Great Commanders
“Beggars do not work, it is said; but then, what is work?”
Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 31
Context: Beggars do not work, it is said; but then, what is work? A navvy works by swinging a pick. An accountant works by adding up figures. A beggar works by standing out of doors in all weathers and getting varicose veins, bronchitis etc. It is a trade like any other; quite useless, of course — but, then, many reputable trades are quite useless. And as a social type a beggar compares well with scores of others. He is honest compared with the sellers of most patent medicines, high-minded compared with a Sunday newspaper proprietor, amiable compared with a hire-purchase tout-in short, a parasite, but a fairly harmless parasite. He seldom extracts more than a bare living from the community, and, what should justify him according to our ethical ideas, he pays for it over and over in suffering.
