Quotes about beggar
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Theodor Mommsen photo

“It is a dreadful picture—this picture of Italy under the rule of the oligarchy. There was nothing to bridge over or soften the fatal contrast between the world of the beggars and the world of the rich. The more clearly and painfully this contrast was felt on both sides—the giddier the height to which riches rose, the deeper the abyss of poverty yawned—the more frequently, amidst that changeful world of speculation and playing at hazard, were individuals tossed from the bottom to the top and again from the top to the bottom. The wider the chasm by which the two worlds were externally divided, the more completely they coincided in the like annihilation of family life—which is yet the germ and core of all nationality—in the like laziness and luxury, the like unsubstantial economy, the like unmanly dependence, the like corruption differing only in its tariff, the like criminal demoralization, the like longing to begin the war with property. Riches and misery in close league drove the Italians out of Italy, and filled the peninsula partly with swarms of slaves, partly with awful silence. It is a terrible picture, but not one peculiar to Italy; wherever the government of capitalists in a slave-state has fully developed itself, it has desolated God's fair world in the same way as rivers glisten in different colours, but a common sewer everywhere looks like itself, so the Italy of the Ciceronian epoch resembles substantially the Hellas of Polybius and still more decidedly the Carthage of Hannibal's time, where in exactly similar fashion the all-powerful rule of capital ruined the middle class, raised trade and estate-farming to the highest prosperity, and ultimately led to a— hypocritically whitewashed—moral and political corruption of the nation. All the arrant sins that capital has been guilty of against nation and civilization in the modern world, remain as far inferior to the abominations of the ancient capitalist-states as the free man, be he ever so poor, remains superior to the slave; and not until the dragon-seed of North America ripens, will the world have again similar fruits to reap.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Italy under the Oligarchy
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

Adam Smith photo
William J. Locke photo
Rudyard Kipling photo
John Holt (Lord Chief Justice) photo

“A man may be reputed an able man this year, and yet be a beggar the next; it is a misfortune that happens to many men, and his former reputation will signify nothing.”

John Holt (Lord Chief Justice) (1642–1710) English lawyer and Lord Chief Justice of England

Reg. v. Swendsen (1702), 14 How. St. Tr. 596.

Joseph Strutt photo

“We tend to think of [Hitler] as an idiot because the central tenet of his ideology was idiotic – and idiotic, of course, it transparently is. Anti-Semitism is a world view through a pinhole: as scientists say about a bad theory, it is not even wrong. Nietzsche tried to tell Wagner that it was beneath contempt. Sartre was right for once when he said that through anti-Semitism any halfwit could become a member of an elite. But, as the case of Wagner proves, a man can have this poisonous bee in his bonnet and still be a creative genius. Hitler was a destructive genius, whose evil gifts not only beggar description but invite denial, because we find it more comfortable to believe that their consequences were produced by historical forces than to believe that he was a historical force. Or perhaps we just lack the vocabulary. Not many of us, in a secular age, are willing to concede that, in the form of Hitler, Satan visited the Earth, recruited an army of sinners, and fought and won a battle against God. We would rather talk the language of pseudoscience, which at least seems to bring such events to order. But all such language can do is shift the focus of attention down to the broad mass of the German people, which is what Goldhagen has done, in a way that, at least in part, lets Hitler off the hook – and unintentionally reinforces his central belief that it was the destiny of the Jewish race to be expelled from the Volk as an inimical presence.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Ibid.
Essays and reviews, As Of This Writing (2003)

“That my old bitter heart was pierced in this black doom,
That foreign devils have made our land a tomb,
That the sun that was Munster's glory has gone down
Has made me a beggar before you, Valentine Brown.”

Egan O'Rahilly (1670–1726) Irish poet

"Valentine Brown", as quoted in An Anthology of Irish Literature (1954), p. 239
Variant translation:
Because all night my mind inclines to wander and to rave,
Because the English dogs have made Ireland a green grave,
Because all of Munster's glory is daily trampled down,
I have traveled far to meet you, Valentine Brown.

Bion of Borysthenes photo
Florbela Espanca photo

“To be a poet is to be taller, to be bigger
Than men! It is to bite as if you’re kissing!
It is to give alms, although you are a beggar like
King of the Realm where only pain is missing!It is to have a thousand desires for splendor
And do not even know what we want!
It is to have inside yourself a flaming star,
It is to have the condor’s mighty claw and wing!It is to be hungry, to be thirsty of Infinity!
By helmet, golden and satin mornings…
It is to condense the world into one lonely cry!And it is loving you, thus, hopelessly…
And it is you being soul, and blood, and life in me
And tell it singing to everyone!”

Florbela Espanca (1894–1930) Portuguese poet

Ser poeta é ser mais alto, é ser maior
Do que os homens! Morder como quem beija!
É ser mendigo e dar como quem seja
Rei do Reino de Áquem e de Além Dor!<p>É ter de mil desejos o esplendor
E não saber sequer que se deseja!
É ter cá dentro um astro que flameja,
É ter garras e asas de condor!<p>É ter fome, é ter sede de Infinito!
Por elmo, as manhas de oiro e de cetim...
É condensar o mundo num só grito!<p>E é amar-te, assim, perdidamente...
É seres alma, e sangue, e vida em mim
E dizê-lo cantando a toda a gente!
Quoted in Citações e Pensamentos de Florbela Espanca (2012), p. 163
Translated http://emocaoeeuforia.wordpress.com/2012/12/10/beautiful-flower-flor-bela/ by Isabel Teles
The Flowering Heath (1931), "Perdidamente"

Paramahansa Yogananda photo
John C. Wright photo

“Those who work are free. There are only three categories of nonproductive people: babies, beggars, robbers.”

John C. Wright (1961) American novelist and technical writer

Source: Fugitives of Chaos (2006), Chapter 18, “Festive Days on the Slopes of Vesuvius” (p. 285)

John Heywood photo

“Beggars should be no choosers.”

John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs

Part I, chapter 10.
Proverbs (1546), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Dilip Sankarreddy photo
L. Ron Hubbard photo
James Russell Lowell photo
Anthony Giddens photo
Pierre-Auguste Renoir photo
John C. Wright photo
Ziaur Rahman photo

“We must not be beggars. Why should we beg? We have something to offer.”

Ziaur Rahman (1936–1981) President of Bangladesh

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]

Mary McCarthy photo

“The American character looks always as if it had just had a rather bad haircut, which gives it, in our eyes at any rate, a greater humanity than the European, which even among its beggars has an all too professional air.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

"America the Beautiful: The Humanist in the Bathtub", p. 17
On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

Marlon Brando photo
Joseph Strutt photo
Abdul Sattar Edhi photo

“I am a beggar for the poor. Serving humanity is the biggest Jihad.”

Abdul Sattar Edhi (1928–2016) Pakistani philanthropist, social activist, ascetic and humanitarian

as quoted by Chris Brummitt of AP, in NBC News ( August 29, 2010 http://www.nbcnews.com/id/38903962/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/t/aging-philanthropist-pakistans-mother-teresa/#.V4_oBvskrcs/). Retrieved on July 21, 2016

Muhammad bin Qasim photo
Perry Anderson photo
George Eliot photo

“You can't make cheese from rats. … It's hard enough just milking the little beggars.”

Arthur M. Jolly (1969) American writer

Jenn Gunn, Act II, Scene 2
Long Joan Silver (2013)

Nakayama Miki photo

“However wretched you may be, never say you are wretched, for I shall never make beggars of you.”

Nakayama Miki (1798–1887) Founder of Tenrikyo

The Life of Oyasama, Foundress of Tenrikyo, p. 33
The Life of Oyasama

Walter Raleigh photo

“Silence in love bewrays more woe
Than words, though ne’er so witty:
A beggar that is dumb, you know,
May challenge double pity.”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

The Silent Lover, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Calvin Coolidge photo
Andrew Ure photo
Theodore L. Cuyler photo
Alfred, Lord Tennyson photo
Epictetus photo
John Ray photo

“If wishes were butter-cakes, beggars might bite.
If wishes were thrushes, beggars would eat birds.
If wishes would bide, beggars would ride.”

John Ray (1627–1705) British botanist

Source: English Proverbs (1670), p. 174

Jorge Luis Borges photo
Herodotus photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“They did not labor for others. They were beggars—parasites—vermin. They were insane. They followed the teachings of Christ. They took no thought for the morrow. They mutilated their bodies—scarred their flesh and destroyed their minds for the sake of happiness in another world. During the journey of life they kept their eyes on the grave.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

A Thanksgiving Sermon (1897)
Context: It taught that the business of this life was to prepare for death. It insisted that a certain belief was necessary to insure salvation, and that all who failed to believe, or doubted in the least would suffer eternal pain. According to the church the natural desires, ambitions and passions of man were all wicked and depraved. To love God, to practice self-denial, to overcome desire, to despise wealth, to hate prosperity, to desert wife and children, to live on roots and berries, to repeat prayers, to wear rags, to live in filth, and drive love from the heart—these, for centuries, were the highest and most perfect virtues, and those who practiced them were saints. The saints did not assist their fellow-men. Their fellow-men assisted them. They did not labor for others. They were beggars—parasites—vermin. They were insane. They followed the teachings of Christ. They took no thought for the morrow. They mutilated their bodies—scarred their flesh and destroyed their minds for the sake of happiness in another world. During the journey of life they kept their eyes on the grave.

Jorge Luis Borges photo

“In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.”

On Exactitude in Science, as translated by Andrew Hurley, in Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions (1999); first published in Los Anales de Buenos Aires, año 1, no. 3 (March 1946)
Context: In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.<!

William Saroyan photo

“Every man alive in the world is a beggar of one sort or another, every last one of them, great and small.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

"The Beggars" in The William Saroyan Reader (1958)
Context: Every man alive in the world is a beggar of one sort or another, every last one of them, great and small. The priest begs God for grace, and the king begs something for something. Sometimes he begs the people for loyalty, sometimes he begs God to forgive him. No man in the world can have endured ten years without having begged God to forgive him.

Nikos Kazantzakis photo

“My prayer is not the whimpering of a beggar nor a confession of love. Nor is it the petty reckoning of a small tradesman”

The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: My prayer is not the whimpering of a beggar nor a confession of love. Nor is it the petty reckoning of a small tradesman: Give me and I shall give you.
My prayer is the report of a soldier to his general: This is what I did today, this is how I fought to save the entire battle in my own sector, these are the obstacles I encountered, this is how I plan to fight tomorrow.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson photo
Jiddu Krishnamurti photo

“What brings understanding is love. When your heart is full, then you will listen to the teacher, to the beggar, to the laughter of children, to the rainbow, and to the sorrow of man. Under every stone and leaf, that which is eternal exists.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

"Ninth Talk in Bombay, (14 March 1948) http://www.jkrishnamurti.com/krishnamurti-teachings/view-text.php?tid=270&chid=4600&w=%22What+brings+understanding+is+love%22, J.Krishnamurti Online, JKO Serial No. BO48Q1, published in The Collected Works, Vol. IV, p. 200
1940s
Context: What brings understanding is love. When your heart is full, then you will listen to the teacher, to the beggar, to the laughter of children, to the rainbow, and to the sorrow of man. Under every stone and leaf, that which is eternal exists. But we do not know how to look for it. Our minds and hearts are filled with other things than understanding of "what is". Love and mercy, kindliness and generosity do not cause enmity. When you love, you are very near truth. For, love makes for sensitivity, for vulnerability. That which is sensitive is capable of renewal. Then truth will come into being. It cannot come if your mind and heart are burdened, heavy with ignorance and animosity.

Tenzin Gyatso photo

“There is a saying in Tibetan that “at the door of the miserable rich man sleeps the contented beggar.””

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

The point of this saying is not that poverty is a virtue, but that happiness does not come with wealth, but from setting limits to one’s desires, and living within those limits with satisfaction.
In [Rubin, Gary, Your Emotional Fitness: Everything You Need to Know to Live a Life of Abundance, http://books.google.com/books?id=CGqu8-5W7UUC&pg=PA173, April 2013, Balboa Press, 978-1-4525-7059-4, 173–].

Alfred, Lord Tennyson photo
Balasaraswati photo

“There used to be beggar, a sort of maniac, who would jump up and dance like a monkey while singing tat tarigappa tei ta, tat tarigappa tei ta.”

Balasaraswati (1918–1984) Indian dancer

Bala would imitate him, both dancing like monkeys... All of us tried to snub him but the beggar could not be turned out. It meant a few coins for him; he made a regular visit to our house and the two used to dance. That was the real starting point for Bala’s dancing mania.

Patrick Rothfuss photo
Rudyard Kipling photo

“When next he came to me he was drunk—royally drunk on many poets for the first time revealed to him. His pupils were dilated, his words tumbled over each other, and he wrapped himself in quotations—as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of emperors.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

The Finest Story in the World http://www.telelib.com/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/ManyInventions/fineststory.html (1893).
Other works

Jane Austen photo

“The maxim "A university professor is the next easiest profession after a beggar" really rings true.”

Goro Shimura (1930–2019) Japanese mathematician

[The Map of My Life, 2008, 7, https://books.google.com/books?id=eYuojP7kgvkC&pg=PA7]

Nagarjuna photo

“Without hope of reward
Provide help to others.
Bear suffering alone,
And share your pleasures with beggars.”

Nagarjuna (150–250) Indian philosopher

§ 272
Major attributed works, Ratnāvalī (Precious Garland)

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo

“When a warrior learns to "see" he "sees" that a man is a luminous egg whether he's a beggar or a king and there's no way to change anything; or rather, what could be changed in that luminous egg? What?”

Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe], (1998), Quotations from A Separate Reality (Chapter 6)

Charles Fillmore photo
Swami Sivananda photo

“Stand not a beggar before the door of science seeking power that kills more than heals.”

Swami Sivananda (1887–1963) Indian philosopher

Sayings of Swami Sivanada (1947)