"Poverty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the true remedy lies with Congress at all. I do not question the right to demand of Congress any thing, but I do doubt the propriety or need of such a proceeding, of course, in the case under consideration. As to "that kind which sends poor white boys to Coventry," because of their poverty, etc., I can say with absolute truthfulness it no longer exists. When it did exist the power to discontinue it did not lie with Congress. Congress has no control over personal whims or prejudices. But I make a slight mistake. There was a time when influence, wealth, ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... service to his people in their every need, from the building of roads to the organization and teaching of schools. It would have been impossible for Oberlin to have served these people through preaching alone. Being a mature community, indeed old in suffering and in poverty, they needed the ministry of a pastor, and this service he rendered them in the immersion of his life with theirs, and the bearing of their burdens, even the most material and economic burden of ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... student in common parlance will express his destitution or poverty by saying, "I have not a bowel." The use of the word with this signification has arisen, probably, from a jocular reference to a ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... hope anger virtue bread diplomacy milk carpet man death sincerity telescope mountain poverty Senate novel. ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... same direction; her commercial interests are rapidly progressing, but her peasantry is at a standstill, France and Italy have already grown a fat bourgeoisie, but their workers remain in a limbo of poverty and strikes. And in all these countries, including Germany, Socialism has arisen as a protest against the commercial order—which fact certainly does not look as if commercialism ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... whine at his elbow, and a deplorable appeal for alms. He looked around in some irritation, and with a sudden shock found himself confronted with the embodied proof of his somewhat stilted fancies. There, close beside him, his face altered and disfigured by poverty and disgrace, his body barely covered by greasy ill-fitting rags, stood his old friend Charles Herbert, who had matriculated on the same day as himself, with whom he had been merry and wise for twelve revolving terms. Different occupations and varying interests had interrupted the friendship, and ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... soft flannel. Miss Panthea Potter contributed a jar of currant jam, three years sealed, and pretended that she was not moved. The minister copied out a verse from the Psalms and fixed it so cunningly about a gold piece that, proud as a girl in her poverty, Elizabeth could not refuse the gentle gift. It was he, too, possessing the advantage of a clerkly hand, who arranged for Elizabeth's admission to the free ward of the hospital, and wrote to his niece Mary, living by good fortune ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... hear his imitation of birds, &c., but one fatal day it was discovered that the sounds were produced by an instrument—probably a pierced peach-stone—which he concealed in his mouth, and after that no one cared to hear him, and he died in great poverty a few ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... to have led to his conversion to passionate religion. When his marriage with Sir George More's sixteen-year-old daughter brought him at first only imprisonment and poverty, he summed up the sorrows of the situation in the famous line—a line which has some additional interest as suggesting the correct pronunciation ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... unhappy-looking little twin orphans, with white thin faces, and bones in their clothes instead of legs and arms, committed to the mercies of Mr Malison by their grandfather. Bent into all the angles of a grasshopper, and lean with ancient poverty, the old man tottered away with his stick in one hand, stretched far out to support his stooping frame, and carried in the other the caps of the two forsaken urchins, saying, as he went, in a ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... come to mean the same as gobemouche in France; and clever Pat knows well enough that there is not a fly in the whole region of fable which is too large for the brutal Saxon to swallow. Abject poverty without shoes to its feet, with only a few rags to cover its unwashed nakedness, and an unfurnished mud cabin shared with the pigs and poultry for its sole dwelling-place—abject poverty begs a copper from "his honour" for the love of ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... penetrating to the very bones, and dark as Egypt, when the two companies returned with Mrs. Crane and her six children. One rickety wagon, a mangy old horse, a cow, some bedding, and a few cooking utensils, were the trophies of the trip. These things told a tale of poverty, but they were all the poor widow of ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... been, to say the least, unfavourable. And yet my name once stood as high in fields and courts, as that of the Constable; nor is it aught more disgraceful than what is indeed often esteemed the worst of disgraces—poverty, which prevents my still aspiring to places of honour and fame. If my youthful follies have been numerous, I have paid for them by the loss of my fortune, and the degradation of my condition; and therein, my happy kinsman might, if he pleased, do me some aid—I mean not with ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... plain. Pinned forever to the accident of economic birth, all their energies sucked up by the struggle for bread and meat, these poor were mocked with bitter "equality" which did not equalize, but despoiled of all chance to extricate themselves from their poverty. And their terrible revenge was to spread their own stagnation upward. Neither could the rich extricate themselves from their riches. The sorriest thing in the picture was that they did not desire to. Behold ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Belfield knew both Mrs. Lenox and Georgy so well—their history, the miserable shortcomings of their home, the girl's scanty education both of intellect and morals—that we could but attribute their faults to sheer worldliness combined with the evils of their bitter poverty. Jack and myself, at least, with the most meagre excuse readily forgave Georgy everything. She was so beautiful, so radiant in all the phases of her dingy life, so good-natured even in her contempt of our ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... escorted Gloria to the end of the street and back. Gloria returned on the opposite side with the idea of more thoroughly exploring. But she might as well have kept to the one side; both sides were alike in tenements and children—dreariness and poverty. There was no choice. It was with a long breath of relief that Gloria emerged again upon the main street. She filled her lungs with the cleaner air, and gazed with a new admiration at the ...
— Gloria and Treeless Street • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... terrors, if once it were allowed to remove this pressure. Henry the Fourth had before his eyes for half a lifetime, the uninterrupted spectacle of Austrian ambition and Austrian lust of dominion, which neither adversity nor poverty of talents, though generally they check all human passions, could extinguish in a bosom wherein flowed one drop of the blood of Ferdinand of Arragon. Austrian ambition had destroyed for a century the peace of Europe, and effected the most violent ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... pig-driving was not so general, nor had it made such rapid advances as in modern times. It was, then, simply, pig-driving, unaccompanied by the improvements of poverty, sickness, and famine. Political economy had not then taught the people how to be poor upon the most scientific principles; free trade had not shown the nation the most approved plan of reducing itself to the lowest possible state of distress; nor liberalism enabled the working classes ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... and harboured in times of peace. These forces permeate the very structure of society. A new and fierce light beats on our slums, our industrialism, on the old divisions of class and quality, on the standards of comfort and success. Poverty, sickness, and child mortality—the whole hideous war of Mammon through which millions of our fellow-creatures are condemned to the perpetual service of Want—can no longer conveniently be left outside the operations of ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... a smouldering fever, Of sorrow and poverty; And no one in all that country Knows his title ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... form, place, or name, Beneath the flaunting robes of sin, Through poverty and squalid shame, Thou ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Myrtoan sea in a Cyprian bark. The merchant, dreading the south-west wind contending with the Icarian waves, commends tranquility and the rural retirement of his village; but soon after, incapable of being taught to bear poverty, he refits his shattered vessel. There is another, who despises not cups of old Massic, taking a part from the entire day, one while stretched under the green arbute, another at the placid head ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... more to trust to their promises, or to stoop to apply to them for patronage. He has been these last two years in an obscure garret writing for bread. He says, however, that he is sure he is happier, even in this situation, than are some of his cousins at this instant, who are struggling in poverty to be genteel, or to keep up a family name, and he would not change places with those who are in a state of idle and opprobrious dependence. I understand (remember, this is a secret between ourselves)—I understand that Secretary Cunningham ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... If it were possible that his art could be forgotten, his name would still be gratefully remembered for his numberless deeds of kindness. We have quoted Wagner's acknowledgment of Liszt's exertions in his cause, and his efforts on behalf of Robert Franz rescued that composer from poverty when old age was coming upon him. Beethoven was always the object of Liszt's worship, and the monument to the master at Bonn was reared chiefly ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... occasionally to noble utterance, but his voice is fainter and his talent more slender than Lanier's. His life was a painful one, marred by poverty and disease, and he died at the age of thirty-eight. Hayne's work is even less important, for he did not, like Timrod and Lanier, touch an occasional height of inspired utterance. His name is cherished in ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... that the members of the four sramas have a claim to the knowledge of Brahman, and that the duties connected with each srarna promote knowledge. A doubt now arises whether those men also who, on account of poverty and so on, stand outside the sramas are qualified for the knowledge of Brahman, or rtot.—They are not, the Prvapakshin holds, since such knowledge is to be attained in a way dependent on the special duties of each srama; while those who ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... of the mischief, I am sure that much harm was done to the children of the sub- wealthy classes, by the system which passes current among the Erewhonians as education. The poorest children suffered least—if destruction and death have heard the sound of wisdom, to a certain extent poverty has ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... nationalities. Those who were not priests were ordained at Venice, having received faculties from the Nuncio, who was then in that city and who was afterward called Cardinal Verallus. They were promoted to the priesthood sub titulo paupertatis, having made vows of poverty and chastity. That year no ships left for the East, on account of the breach of the treaty between the Venetians and Turks. When, therefore, they saw their hopes deferred, they dispersed into various parts of the Venetian ...
— The Autobiography of St. Ignatius • Saint Ignatius Loyola
... good time to get in his work, so he began talking to the Indian about the wickedness of looking upon the whisky when it was bay, and when it giveth its color in the nose. He told the Indian of the wrecked homes, the poverty, the disgrace and death that followed the use of liquor, and wound up by pleading with him to give up his cups and join the angel band and shout hosannas in a temperance lodge. The Indian did not understand a word that Suthland was saying, but supposing ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... came, if he had been in condition to notice, he would have seen a bare little room now that the mother was out of it, with signs of poverty everywhere. The old table and worn chairs, bare floors scarred with the tread of little feet, the scant cupboard, the worn shoes by the fire, all told how little the queen of the home had to work with. There was nothing of beauty here but herself ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... which portion of our Indian empire there are entire villages exclusively inhabited by iron smelters, who, sad to relate, are distinguished from the agricultural villages surrounding them by their filth, poverty, and generally degraded condition. There are whole tribes in India who have no other occupation than iron smelting. They, of course, sink no shafts and open no mines, and are not permanent in any place. They simply remain in one place so long as ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... whether citizen or stranger, who appears to be wise; and if he is not wise, then in vindication of the oracle I show him that he is not wise; and my occupation quite absorbs me, and I have no time to give either to any public matter of interest or to any concern of my own, but I am in utter poverty by reason of ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... savin' people. In the day o' plenty they think o' the day o' poverty an' lay by fer it. All at once one uv 'em thought uv a few kernels o' corn, he hed pushed through a little crack in the tin floor one day a long time ago. It happened there was quite a hole under the crack an' each uv 'em bad stored some kernels unbeknown t' the other. ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... here) represented a real reaction, and was doing or saying things which the people, had they been as well informed as himself, would have agreed with. With the further disabilities of (2) particularism, (3) poverty, (4) insufficiency (to which I add, in this country, restraint by the political lawyers), it ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... successful! Trample on others, but push forward yourself! Money, money!—let its chink be your music; let its yellow shine be fairer than the eyes of love or friendship! Let its piles accumulate and ever accumulate! There are beggars in the streets, but they are impostors! There is poverty in many places, but why seek to relieve it? Why lessen the sparkling heaps of gold by so much as a coin? Accumulate and ever accumulate! Live so, and then—die! And ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... is right.) And we very readily grant that there are many women living in idleness and luxury on the bounty of their male relatives, and we say it with sorrow and shame that these are estimated the successful women in the opinion of the world. But while some feast in idleness, many others slave in poverty. The great army of women workers are ill-paid, badly housed, and their work is not honored or respected or paid for. What share have they in man's chivalry? Chivalry is like a line of credit. You ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... describes as having been borne "with a martyr-like cheerfulness." The offer of a Baronetcy to her father—the only return which it was then in the power of the Crown to bestow, for the heavy losses he had sustained—was gratefully declined on the ground of poverty. In 1644 important changes took place in her family, or, as she poetically expresses it, alluding to the state of public affairs, "as the turbulence of the waves disperses the splinters of the rock," so were they separated. ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... the two friends were inseparable. Dorlange, regularly supplied with means, was a sort of Marquis d'Aligre; Gaston, on the contrary, was reduced to his own resources for a living, and would have lived a life of extreme poverty had it not been for his friend. But where friends love each other—and the situation is more rare than people imagine—all on one side and nothing on the other is a determining cause for association. So, without any reckoning between them, our two pigeons held ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... near so much of a Spartan as he thought. His long association with the Lakes and their friends might, you'd think, have brought him the consolatory reflection that a woman who earned even a successful chorus-girl's wages, needn't be pitied too lamentably on the score of poverty; that Rose could, no doubt, have afforded a better room than that, if she'd wanted to. And that even a three-dollar room, a whole room that you hadn't to share with anybody, would—if the rent of it left you money enough to send out your clothes to the laundry ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the circumstances of the family.[1] Kentucky was yet a wild, new country. As compared with later periods of emigration, settlement was slow and pioneer life a hard struggle. So it was probably under the stress of poverty, as well as by the marriage of the older children, that the home was gradually broken up, and Thomas Lincoln became "even in childhood ... a wandering laboring boy, and grew up literally without education.... Before he was grown he passed one year as a hired hand with his ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... Lilian Westbrook, in The Banker's Daughter. They have a lover's quarrel and separate. Lilian, to save her father from poverty, marries another man. Meeting Harold in after years, her love revives. When he challenges a Frenchman who has spoken lightly of her, she follows him to the field in time to receive his last breath and sob in his ear—"I have loved you—you only—from the first."—Bronson ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... born rich and some are born poor, and this inequality makes misery, and then some lose their possessions, which others get hold of, and that makes more misery. We can put our fingers on the two great evils of life as it now is: the first is poverty; and the second is infirmity, which is the accompaniment of increasing years. Poverty, which is only the unequal distribution of things desired, makes strife, and is the opportunity of lawyers; and infirmity is the excuse for ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the hideous problem of human suffering can never be solved by vesting private property-rights in the hands of public functionaries. But the note of anguish in that voice of desperation and revolt need not, for all this, be confused with its madder strains. The claim of poverty upon riches is to-day a tremendously ethical one. Help—and help wise, earnest, persistent—is the inflexible moral tax levied by life itself on all who have an overplus of wealth wherewith to relieve deserving misery. The occasional careless signing of a cheque, or ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... solemnly, "they call me a 'commercial manager' because I won't play Ibsen or Maeterlinck. They didn't help me when I tried for higher game. I had years of poverty, years of privation. To-day I take advantage of a general feminine desire to view Miss Tottie Coughdrop; and, to the critics, I'm a mere Bulgarian, a 'commercial manager.' So was Lester Wallack when he admitted ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... returned, as if enveloped in a fog of sounds, exclaimed, "A while ago, Des Hermies, you were speaking of the Franciscans. Do you know that that order, to live up to its professions of poverty, was supposed not to possess even a bell? True, this rule has been relaxed somewhat. It was too severe! Now they have a bell, but ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... bewildered, and swims with the sense of the ineffable distance of that faith from the view of things which is familiar to him, with its strangeness, and then again its rude simplicity, as he considers it, and its apparent poverty contrasted with the exuberant life and reality of his own world. All this, the school I am speaking of understands well; it comprehends that, if it can but exclude the professors of Religion from the lecture-halls ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... astonishingly precocious. At twenty years of age he became head of his class at the Central School; but the best thing about him is that, although in possession of a fortune, yet he has a passion for work. The rich man who works accepts voluntary poverty." ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... meals for the sake of gold. I blew round the courtyard," said the Wind, "like a watchman blowing his home, but no watchman was there. I twirled the weather-cock round on the summit of the tower, and it creaked like the snoring of a warder, but no warder was there; nothing but mice and rats. Poverty laid the table-cloth; poverty sat in the wardrobe and in the larder. The door fell off its hinges, cracks and fissures made their appearance everywhere; so that I could go in and out at pleasure, and that is how I know all about it. Amid smoke ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... to extreme poverty, a Hebrew might sell himself, i.e. his services, for six years, in which case he received the purchase money himself. Lev. ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... not help matters, much, as I did not know the date of the storm. I tried to think of some non-committal thing to say, to keep up my end of the talk, and render my poverty in the matter of reminiscences as little noticeable as possible, but I seemed to be about out of non-committal things. I was about to say, "You haven't changed a bit since then"—but that was risky. I thought of saying, "You have improved ever so much since then"—but that wouldn't answer, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... military Military manpower - military age Military manpower - reaching military National holiday Nationality Natural hazards Natural resources Net migration rate People - note Pipelines Political parties and leaders Political pressure groups and leaders Population Population below poverty line Population growth rate Ports and harbors Radio broadcast stations Radios Railways Religions Sex ratio Suffrage Telephone system Telephones - main lines in use Telephones - mobile cellular Television broadcast stations Televisions Terrain Total fertility rate Transportation - note Unemployment ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... errors of Churchill, as a man, there does not seem to exist any plea of palliation, except what may be found in the poverty of his early circumstances, and in the strength of his later passions. The worst is, that he never seems to have been seduced into sin through the bewildering and bewitching mists of imagination. It was naked sensuality that he appeared ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... idle, prosperous people know, how entirely the splendour of his material surroundings would be in harmony with the splendour of his passion! What blundering, ferocious god of cruelty had immured in the dungeon of poverty this soul of his that so overflowed ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... the 23rd of November 1760. His father, Claude Babeuf, had deserted the French army in 1738 and taken service under Maria Theresa, rising, it is said, to the rank of major. Amnestied in 1755 he returned to France, but soon sank into dire poverty, being forced to earn a pittance for his wife and family as a day labourer. The hardships endured by Babeuf during early years do much to explain his later opinions. He had received from his father the smatterings of a liberal ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... said she, "we are infinitely worse off in every way, to-day, than we were under the rule of the Incas. Poverty, misery, oppression, and suffering of every kind are to be met with on all hands and wherever one goes, while four hundred years ago we had a far higher state of civilisation than now exists, in which poverty and oppression, with ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... human night-bird and the prowling human jackal, whose sole end is money and money's worth, have no terrors for Holy Poverty. But there are other creatures of prey more terrible than these. And the padding footsteps that followed, hurrying when she hurried and slackening when she went more slowly, and stopping dead when she paused and looked round, conveyed to her ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Leamington Spa About Warwick Recollections of a Gifted Woman Lichfield and Uttoxeter Pilgrimage to Old Boston Near Oxford Some of the Haunts of Burns A London Suburb Up the Thames Outside Glimpses of English Poverty Civic Banquets. ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to me! He fervently loved Agnes Hedworth, but his poverty was an obstacle to the union; and both died so young, that there was little opportunity of ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... five shillings, all the same, at a little broker's shop down in the most poverty-stricken part of Coleby. It had been bought by the broker at a sale in company with a parrot, a cockatoo, and a canary, all being the property of a lady lately deceased. The canary died before he reached home, and the parrot and cockatoo, on ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... of the most famous of those lively farces with which Gil Vicente for a quarter of a century delighted the Portuguese Court and which still hold the reader by their vividness and charm. Its fame rests on the portraiture of the poverty-stricken but magnificent nobleman who has been a favourite object of satire with writers in the Peninsula since the time of Martial, and who in a poem of the Cancioneiro Geral is described in almost the identical words of ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... Kentigern, at an hour of the afternoon when it was crossed by working men and women returning to their quarters from the docks and factories. Never in any light a picturesque or even cheery procession, there were days when its unwholesome, monotonous poverty and dull hopelessness of prospect impressed him more forcibly. He remembered how at first the spectacle of barefooted girls and women slipping through fog and mist across the greasy pavement had offended his fresh New World conception of a more tenderly nurtured ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... great man's gratitude for the preservation of his daughter's life! He was grateful—was willing to make the young man his coachman, and to pay him in money; but he was not willing to receive him in his parlor on an equal social footing, for who knew better than he from what depths of poverty and degradation the young upstart had sprung! Theodore did not look very grave; he even laughed as he turned and ran lightly down the granite steps; and he was pleased but not surprised when a few days thereafter he met Dora on the square, and she stopped and frankly and distinctly disclaimed ...
— Three People • Pansy
... why should I marry me? Lovers are plenty, but fortunes are few Why lose wages that carry me Better by far than a husband could do? Fond youth, calmly I'm viewing you, Steeling a heart that might flutter and throb: I've no thought of pursuing you; Poverty's stupid—I'll ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... principle the prejudice of education has left upon their intellect. In our more fashionable hells, wine and choice liqueurs are the stimulants 321to vice; here, the seduction consists in the strumming of an ill-toned piano, to the squeaking of some poor discordant whom poverty compels to public exposure; and who, generally being of the softer sex, pity protects from the severity of critical remark. I need not say our report to the Dalmaines was unfavourable; and the divine little ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... point out these phenomena, as a subject of speculation to such as are curious with regard to moral enquiries. It is sufficient for the present purpose to observe in general, that power and riches commonly cause respect, poverty and meanness contempt, though particular views and incidents may sometimes raise the passions of envy and ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... worse, but feebly to resent it. He had lost the conscious dignity of manhood; nay, had perhaps never possessed it, for his battle had begun at so early an age. The sense that he was wretchedly poor, and the knowledge that poverty is the mother of degradation, made him at any moment a self-convicted criminal; accused, however wrongly, it was inevitable that his face should be against him. To go to Dagworthy with sovereigns in his hand, and this ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... where it is collected and brought to this city; for their natives have no other source of income which would be to them so important and profitable as the gathering, carrying, and sale of buyo, bonga, and tobacco, and if this were stopped they would be reduced to the greatest poverty and want. That would make it impossible for them to succeed in paying the royal tributes, impositions, repartimientos, and other consequences of the service of his Majesty; and to the citizens and the people of various nationalities who dwell here, for whom the said commodities serve ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... wealth, prosperity, and fortune; he believed in buying well, selling well, doing everything well, making the best use of life while it is ours to enjoy; he believed in always being comfortable, bright, cheery; he knew nothing of trouble; sickness, poverty, loss of friends, were all unknown evils to him; he had a ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... construction. It is, in fact, a waggon-headed vault, broken by Welsh groins—that is to say, groins which cut into the main arch below the apex. It is not singular in the principle of its design, but it is unique in its proportions, in which the exact mean seems to be attained between the poverty and monotony of a waggon-headed ceiling and the ungraceful effect of a mere groined roof with a depressed roof or large span—to which may be added, that with a richness of effect scarcely, if at all, inferior to fan tracery, it is free from those abrupt junctions of the lines and other defects ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... them. Oh, it was a sin that cried to Heaven, to see how princes and nobles scourged and skinned the poor folk. They swilled wine of the best, and plenty, in their own gorgeous castles, but grudged poor bitter poverty its can of beer! Shame ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... nothing particular underneath," David afforded us the opportunity of realising, within a very brief interval, something at least of the abundant humour associated with Mrs. Micawber's worldly wisdom, and Mr. Micawber's ostentatious impecuniosity. A word, that last, it always seems to us—describing poverty, as it does, with such an air of pomp—especially provided beforehand for Mr. Micawber (out of a prophetic anticipation or foreknowledge of ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... poverty, though he might easily have accumulated vast wealth. In his official position he had maintained a degree of magnificence, and Napoleon believed that he had concealed great riches somewhere in the island. He sent spies to question him, but Toussaint's only reply was, "No, the treasures ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... brought me a complaint of his perverse fortune, saying, "I have small means and a large family, and cannot bear up with my load of poverty. Often has a thought crossed my mind, suggesting, Let me remove into another country, that in whatever way I can manage a livelihood none may be informed of my good or bad luck."—(Often he went asleep hungry, and nobody was aware, saying, "Who is he?" Often did his life hang upon his lip, and none ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... occasion the Cortes deplored the prevalent extravagance and the foolish pride which made even the laboring classes vie in richness of dress with the nobility, "whereby they not only squander their own estate, but bring poverty and want to all." When, however, Fernando and Isabella discovered that gold was being used in large amounts in the weaving of these costly tissues, they issued an order which not only prohibited the wearing of this finery, but inflicted heavy penalties ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... present are perhaps as old as any settled civilization. Such are disease and personal violence. Some are due to forces which have come into existence recently, owing to increased communication and accumulated wealth. Such are extreme poverty and the dehumanizing of social relations. With both kinds of evil we are moved to deal, and we are not deterred from the attempt to reform even long-established evil; for we feel that we do not know what is possible. Nothing is inevitable. This is not the place to give ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... consciousness, stretching to the stars and winds and earth, was the very part that had caused his long unrest and yearning—the part that knew the Earth as mother and sought the sweet and savage freedom of what he called with the poverty of modern terms—primitive. The channels leading toward a state of Cosmic Consciousness, one with the Earth Life, were being now flushed and sluiced by the forces emanating from the ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... was most remarkable, and the anachronisms in local color were not so extraordinary as we have often been told." The author a little further on calls attention to the fact that the mise en scene of the old mystery plays had combined splendor with naive poverty. But he is careful to note that the latter condition accompanied the representations given by strolling troupes in small villages or towns, while the former state was found where well paid and highly trained actors gave performances in rich municipalities. In the villages rude stage and scenery ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... its good and bad qualities. Even then I realized the possibilities of my suburb, that hotbed of revolution in which heroes, inventors, and practical men of science, rogues and scoundrels, virtues and vices, were all packed together by poverty, stifled by necessity, drowned in drink, and ...
— Facino Cane • Honore de Balzac
... our townfolk were, naturally, the well-to-do, shading downward, but seldom reaching poverty. As playmate of the children I saw the homes of nearly every one, except a few immigrant New Yorkers, of whom none of us approved. The homes I saw impressed me, but did not overwhelm me. Many were bigger than mine, with newer and shinier things, but they did not seem to ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the food, so that you may tell your aunt I sold none of it. The people say that I have parted with my coat off my back and the shoes from my feet, but do not believe them; if I did, it was on account of my poverty." ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... mankind." Sometimes in accents of wistful {90} wonder, sometimes in tones of revolt and defiant unbelief, the question is asked:—Why does God allow dire calamity, painful disease, earthquakes and shipwrecks, and accidents of the mine? Why does He permit war, or vivisection, or poverty, or vice—in fact any of "the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to"? We should stop these things if we could; why does not He? One is reminded of Mr. William Watson's passionate arraignment of the Powers of Europe at the ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... human nature," the visitor at length volunteered, as if to explain his remarkable interest in the old man, "and I must say that this is one of the most interesting cases I have ever come across. Here we have an old, poverty-stricken man, somewhat weak-minded, who has the vision and the enthusiasm of youth, combined with a child's simplicity. And he really believes that people of capital will carry out ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... where blackmail and extortion are carried on on a more extensive and successful scale than in Persia; all classes and conditions of people are exposed to the danger, and it is only by an assumed air of poverty that a certain amount of security is obtained. A miserable-looking house, it was explained by a Persian, does not attract the covetous eye of the passer-by; an unusually beautiful one does. "It is a fatal mistake," he added, ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Bannister stood for more than the sum of the average young man's values. He was what in our republic is recognized as a promising fellow, bright, magnetic, shifty, well forward in the neologies of society, business, and politics, a born leader in a small way, and as ambitious as poverty and a brimming self-esteem could make him. From his humble law-office window he had seen Phyllis pass along the street in the old Sommerton carriage, and had fallen in love as promptly as possible with her plump, lissome form and ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... How far beneath these two ranks of men shall we place, in the scale of being, those whose pleasure is only in sin or in suffering; who habitually contemplate humanity in poverty or decrepitude, fury or sensuality; whose works are either temptations to its weakness, or triumphs over its ruin, and recognize no other subjects for thought or admiration than the subtlety of the robber, the rage of the soldier, or the joy of the Sybarite. It seems strange, when ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... with toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty stricken man makes the same mistake about ...
— Maxims for Revolutionists • George Bernard Shaw
... event, the nobles of thy line, the provinces of might, children of noble parents, lacking thee as their lord, shall taste the bitterness of poverty. ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton
... Jumieges, where the two old monks gladly received him in the remaining portion of their house. As soon as he recovered his senses, he earnestly asked their pardon for his pride, and the scorn he had shown to the poverty and patient suffering which he ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Aquinas, in his conversation with Dante, relates the life of St. Francis of Assisi, dwelling particularly upon his noble character, and describing how, after becoming wedded to Poverty, he founded the order of the Franciscans, received the stigmata, and died in odor of sanctity, leaving worthy disciples and emulators, such as St. Dominic, to continue and further the good work he had begun. He adds ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... condition of committing an unworthy act, at which my soul revolted. My decision, however, was taken. Although the loss of my money would have subjected me to inconvenience perhaps distress I resolved to submit to any ills which poverty might inflict, rather than comply with the wishes and advice of this unprincipled man, who should have acted towards me as a ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... her coming in; her sadness and her poor joys; her coldness and her hunger. I know when she is alone until midnight, learning from her books; I know when her secret friends steal to her and she is happier—as children can be, even in the midst of poverty—because they come and she may laugh and talk with them in whispers. If she were ill I should know, and I would come and serve her if ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... but she had a lucifer-match or two, and an old newspaper. With this she made long spills, and lighted one, and read two pages by that paper torch, and lighted another before it was out, and then another, and so on in succession, fighting for knowledge against poverty, as she had fought ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... same time that the proclamation of Admiral Saisset encouraged the partizans of the Assembly, proofs were not wanting of the poverty of the Commune in money, as well as men: a new loan obtained from the Bank of France, which had already advanced half a million of francs, and the military nominations which raised Brunel, Eudes, and Duval from absolute obscurity to the ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... thing to refuse to marry her old sweetheart; it was another to take his property and reduce him to poverty. But here was she doing both, and going to be persuaded to marry Neville, and swell his wealth with the very possessions she had taken from Griffith; and him wounded into the bargain for love of her. It was really too cruel. It was an accumulation of different cruelties. Her bosom ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... and for length of days, Arrian. de Exp. Alex. iv. p. 239, also speaks of the independence of these people, which he regards as the result of their poverty and uprightness. Some authors have regarded the phrase "Hippomolgian," i.e. "milking their mares," as an epithet applicable to numerous tribes, since the oldest of the Samatian nomads made their mares' milk one of their ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... quarries, and all hidden places, which had been mysterious mines for exploration in leafy summer, now exposed themselves and their secrets pathetically, and seemed to ask him to overlook their shabby poverty for a while, till they could riot in rich masquerade as before, and trick and entice him with the old deceptions. It was pitiful in a way, and yet cheering—even exhilarating. He was glad that he liked ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... asks, to have published other laws? What is so proper for sin as penance? what is more of the nature of penance, than the sinner's harshness and severity to himself? Is there any thing in this contrary to reason? They are astonished at his ranking poverty among the beatitudes; that he held up the cross as an attraction to his disciples to follow him; that he declared a love of {032} contempt was preferable to the honors of the world. In all this I see the depth of his divine counsels." Such ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... and all the professors and cadets took service in the Confederacy, except Yallas, St. Ange, and Cadet Taliaferro. The latter joined a Union regiment, as a lieutenant, after New Orleans was retaken by the United States fleet under Farragut. I think that both Yallas and St. Ange have died in poverty since the war. Major Smith joined the rebel army in Virginia, and was killed in April, 1865, as he was withdrawing his garrison, by night, from the batteries at Drury's Bluff, at the time General Lee began his final retreat from Richmond. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... can you buy a tent for?" I inquired of Pehr Wasara. "Thirty or forty dollars," he replied. "This is a great deal of money for us poor Lapps." Pehr had plenty of money in the bank, but pretended poverty. I learned also that a ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... grants of Charles the Second. The Tories were caught in their own snare. For most of the grants of Charles and James had been made to Tories; and a resumption of those grants would have reduced some of the chiefs of the Tory party to poverty. Yet it was impossible to draw a distinction between the grants of William and those of his two predecessors. Nobody could pretend that the law had been altered since his accession. If, therefore, the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... journey, and in magnificent housekeeping in Brabant. It was then Edward's interest, as it had previously been Philip's, to bring matters to a crisis. That he failed to do this must be ascribed to the lukewarmness of his allies, the poverty of his exchequer, and, above all, to the still active diplomacy of ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... has many and terrible problems to solve within its own borders, problems that arise not merely from juxtaposition of poverty and riches, but especially from the self-consciousness of both poverty and riches. Each nation must deal with these matters in its own fashion, and yet the spirit in which the problem is approached must ever be fundamentally the ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... them; indeed, we read of him further on standing with the apostles when they were brought before the magistrates. It is a good sign when men stay with those who were made a blessing to them. If Methodism had with her to-day all she has lifted from poverty and degradation, she would ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... to make a tailor laugh. If any other animal wore out his skin as fast as a schoolboy wears out his clothes in winter, it would need a new one once a month. In a country district-school patches were not by any means a sign of poverty, but of the boy's courage and adventurous disposition. Our elders used to threaten to dress us in leather and put sheet-iron seats in our trousers. The boy said that he wore out his trousers on the hard seats in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... so much, and stopped to think a little; for through the incongruity of it, which he did not doubt arose from poverty of imagination in the translator, rendering him unable to see what the poet meant, ran yet an indubitable vein of awful truth, whether fully intended by the writer or not mattered little to such a reader as Donal—when, lifting his eyes, he saw lady Arctura standing before him with a strange listening ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... of what we call wealth a crime?" the young woman asked, bitterly. "Is poverty always ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... generations—to accumulate a village fortune by saving fifty pounds a year, it does not occupy so long to reduce a farmer to poverty when half that sum is annually lost. There was no strongly marked and radical defect in his system of farming to amount for it; it was the muddling, and the muddling only, that did it. His work was blind. He would never ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... this as it may, he probably suspected that Bute would have an influence in the proposed administration. Pitt allowed himself to be swayed by gratitude for help which Temple had given him in the days of his poverty. During this negotiation a riot broke out in London. The silk manufacture was depressed owing to foreign competition, and thousands were consequently almost starving. A bill to check the importation of silk by the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... the merchants began by giving but ninety cents' worth of goods for the dollar; but as the war has continued and the poverty of Spain has become plainer, they have given less and less, until now they will only give thirty cents' worth of goods in exchange for ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 30, June 3, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... high ambition determine to strain every nerve to attain a station of eminence and power, it may be that his intellectual equal, fonder of ease, more disposed to tranquillity, will settle down with a career that at the very best will only remove him a step above poverty; and shall we dare to say that either is wrong? My brother the Lord Chancellor is a great man, no doubt. The mace is a splendid club, and the woolsack a most luxurious sofa; but as I walk my village rounds of a summer's morning, ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... boy in," remarked the doctor, not perversely, but with steadfast kindness. "If our own little boy had lived, and had done this thing accidentally, would I have been sorry he had ever been born? Or if little Ted had grown to be thirteen, and you and I had died in the wilderness of poverty, leaving him to wander out of the city to seek for a home in God's fair country, where his little peaked face could fill out and grow rosy, as Harry's has, would you think it just to have him sent away because he had made a boyish mistake? Of course you would not, mother. Your heart ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... piety in the stress of modern social problems. Some of the men had not even changed their everyday face for their Sabbath countenance by washing it. Some wore collars, and shiny threadbare garments of dignified origin, others were unaffectedly poverty-stricken with dingy shirt-cuffs peeping out of frayed sleeve edges and unhealthily colored scarfs folded complexly round their necks. A minority belonged to the Free-thinking party, but the majority only availed themselves of Wolf's services because ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... A——y's sketch of this extremely-interesting establishment, I cannot but reflect on the striking contrast that it presents, in point of geographical riches, even half a century ago, to the disgraceful poverty, in that line, which, about the same period, prevailed in England, and was severely felt in the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... 1861. They may be reckoned at 12,000. The gipsies, who are scattered in considerable numbers throughout the country, came into Bulgaria in the 14th century. They are for the most part Moslems, and retain their ancient Indian speech. They live in the utmost poverty, occupy separate cantonments in the villages, and are treated as outcasts by the rest of the population. The Bulgarians, being of mixed origin, possess few salient physical characteristics. The Slavonic type is ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... am lying here in great bodily distress and perplexity of mind, and put forth no effort to release me, and thus restore me to useful activity in his service? Many, many, not in Herod's castle, but in other castles, such as beds of affliction, castles of poverty, castles of persecution, castles of bodily infirmity, castles of bereavement, castles of losses and crosses in one way and another, have had the same experiences, the same doubts ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... well when, coming to the top of the down, he saw the old thorn directly before him. Passing it, he would turn his face away not to see it too closely, or, perhaps, to avoid being recognised by it. Then came the time of their extreme poverty, when there was no work at the farm and no one of their own people to help tide them over a season of scarcity, for the old people were dead or in the workhouse or so poor as to want help themselves. It was then that, in his misery at the sight of his ailing anxious wife—the dear Marty of the beautiful ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... universal throughout Egypt, still prevails in China. On the evening of the fifteenth day of the first month in the year, every person is compelled to place before his door a lantern or light, such lights differing in size and expense according to the degree of wealth or poverty of those to whom they belong. Light was the symbol of Muth (Perceptive Wisdom). Among the Persians, the Egyptians, the Mexicans, the Jews, the Etruscans, the Greeks, and the Romans, fire was venerated as the essence of the Deity; and, at the present time, in Thibet, ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... men. Although, as I have remarked, the gates and the pales of the Ghetto are now removed, a stranger can easily tell when he enters what Catholic Rome considers its tainted circle, by the miserable, poverty-stricken appearance of the whole district. The people crowd around him, losing all sense of manly dignity or mental degradation in the anxiety for gain. Skinny shrivelled hands touch his clothes in the hope of arresting his progress; worn-out tawdry finery is thrust before him, in the hope ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... considerable. Satiated, sick of them, yet I continued to frequent them for the simple carnal pleasure of coition. There was no sentiment about it, no liking for the women, for though their manners sometimes amused me, they more frequently shocked me, and the poverty of some distressed me; but I had no money for choicer entertainment. My vigor was great, my pleasure in copulation almost maddening, a cunt was a cunt, and I got my pleasure and relief up it, whatever its owner might have been. A sensuous imagination aided ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... manufacture of ostrich feathers first gave Hamilton a clear insight into poverty. Four or five rooms each occupied by a family of several persons he entered in one tenement, and in each he found three or four people working over ostrich plumes, working nervously at high speed, afraid to stop, even for a moment. He ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... a miserable hamlet, he inquired its name, and on hearing it appeared surprised and thoughtful, as if trying to recall lost memories. Suddenly he asked if a woman named Nouza dwelt in the village, and was told there was an old infirm woman of that name in great poverty. He ordered her to be brought before him. She came and prostrated herself in terror. Ali raised ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... to construct times and events long since past, or to fill the future with plans or experiences not yet reached. Lacking images, however, imagination is handicapped, and its meager products reveal in their barrenness and their lack of warmth and reality the poverty of material. ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... is considered a reproach to have only one wife, a sign of poverty and insignificance. There was on one occasion a heated discussion at Kamdesh concerning the best plans to be adopted to prepare for an expected attack. A man sitting on the outskirts of the assembly controverted something the priest ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... returned the other, "or what remains of him after a well-deserved experience of poverty and law. But in you, Challoner, I can perceive no change; and time may be said, without hyperbole, to write no wrinkle on your ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... melody. He made his translation while "inhibited" from his priestly functions in the Church of England for his high ritualistic views and practice, and so poor that he wrote stories for children to earn his living. His poverty added ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... flying about in a state cf the utmost excitement, from the kitchen into his presence, and out again into the square, asking all sorts of questions; how she was in despair at the scantiness of the general larder and treasury of the strange household; how she was anxious to make up for their poverty by a grand appearance— to make up a sort of Barmecide feast to welcome the white man. "Why," said she, "is he not one of us? Does he not bring plenty of cloth and beads? Talk about the Arabs! Who are they that they should be compared to white men? ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... governess, Nature seemed helpless, and the future held no litter of oblivion. Things might be better, or they might be worse, but they would never be the same; and the innate conservatism of youth asks neither poverty nor riches, but ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... retreating to the furthest end of the palace, he flung his body against the walls; and strong as they were, he so battered them with the shock, that the beams quaked mightily; and he nearly brought the house down in a crash. Thus, stung not only with his rebuff, but with the shame of having poverty cast in his teeth, he unsheathed his wrath against the insulting speech of ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Group Two for locating the underground on Earth was simple and straightforward. Revolutionaries, he had been told, are found in greatest quantity among a civilization's most depressed elements. Poverty breeds dissatisfaction; the have-nots want to take from those who have. Therefore, the logical place to look for subversion is ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... these later years there had been neither time nor money for any fetes. Piety, however, was still left, and it was characteristic of the scrupulousness persisting in Marcus's mother through all the demoralising experiences of poverty that, after she had finished the heavier tasks, she should set to work to mark the religious day by a freshly washed cloth upon the table, with a bowl of red roses picked from the bush that grew by the doorway, ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... and, for the rest, well-meaning enough, and with small private illuminations (somewhat tallowy, it is to be feared) of his own. To him, there, "Pastor of the First Church in Jaalam," our Hosea presents himself as a quiet inexplicable Sphinx-riddle. A rich, poverty of Latin and Greek,—so far is clear enough, even to eyes peering myopic through horn-lensed editorial spectacles,—but naught farther? O purblind, well-meaning, altogether fuscous Melesigenes-Wilbur, there are things in him incommunicable ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... Many an inn owes its survival to a square of canvas—the head of a child, a copper pot, or stretch of dune; and more than one collector now boasts of a masterpiece which had hung for years on some taproom wall, a sure but silent witness of the poverty of a Franz Hals, Wouverman or ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... starship, come to Earth to bring the blessings of Ippling's culture to this backwards planet. Ippling will save you from wars and ills, from poverty and hatred. Ippling will be your destiny. Follow me, Boswellister! Ippling will lead you to the stars! Glory for all!" Boswellister patted ...
— The Glory of Ippling • Helen M. Urban
... even amid my poverty I could not suppress a feeling of amusement, "that depends wholly on the subject of your epistle; business requires few words, and less ingenuity, and is fairly paid for by a couple of shillings; but a love ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... through the life of a curate in a bleak, ugly, cold parish on the northern coast of Cornwall. It had been a weary life and a fearful struggle, made up of duties ill requited and not always satisfactorily performed, of love and poverty, of increasing cares, of sickness, debt, and death. For Mr. Crawley had married almost as soon as he was ordained, and children had been born to him in that chill, comfortless Cornish cottage. He had married a ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... criminal, then, knows neither poverty, hunger, nor cold. What matters to him the horror he inspires in honest men? He does not see ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... well remember father's house, And brother too so kind; Why did I leave them, here to die, This poverty to find? ...
— The Parables Of The Saviour - The Good Child's Library, Tenth Book • Anonymous
... heavy bracelet. Then Wigg, thrusting out his right arm decked with the bracelet, put his left behind his back in affected shame, and walked with a ludicrous gait, declaring that he, whose lot had so long been poverty-stricken, was glad of a scanty gift. When he was asked why he was behaving so, he said that the arm which lacked ornament and had no splendour to boast of was mantling with the modest blush of poverty to behold the other. The ingenuity of this saying won him a present to match the first. For Rolf ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... else shall discommend her choice, I giving it my hearty voice? Wed me? Ah, never near her come The knowledge of the narrow home! Far fly from her dear face, that shows The sunshine lovelier than the rose, The sordid gravity they wear Who poverty's base burthen bear! (And all are poor who come to miss Their custom, though a crown be this.) My hope was, that the wheels of fate, For my exceeding need, might wait, And she, unseen amidst all eyes, Move sightless, till I sought the prize, With honour, in an equal field. But ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... poet are misunderstood, his meaning is not seized nor his point of view taken, when he is accused of dishonouring our nature and being hostile to sentiment, tending to spitefulness and making an unfair use of laughter. Those who detect irony in Comedy do so because they choose to see it in life. Poverty, says the satirist, has nothing harder in itself than that it makes men ridiculous. But poverty is never ridiculous to Comic perception until it attempts to make its rags conceal its bareness in a forlorn attempt at decency, or ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... obedience to its just requirements would impoverish you? Infinitely better, that you be honestly poor than dishonestly rich. Infinitely better to "do justly," and be a Lazarus; than to become a Croesus, by clinging to and accumulating ill-gotten gains. Do you add to the fear of poverty, that of losing your honors—those which are anticipated, as well as those, which already deck your brow? Allow us to assure you, that it will be impossible for you to redeem "Henry Clay, the statesman," and "Henry Clay, the orator," or even ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... well as a trader, and could not help being deeply impressed with the great fact, that there was a wide difference among the nations of the world. Some were enlightened, enterprising, civilized, and flourishing; others were naked savages, living in ignorance, poverty, vice, and starvation, perpetually murdering one another, and ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... saner world this time. No misery, no war, no poverty, woe, strife, creeds, oppression, tears—for we are wiser than those other folk, and there shall ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... proved a useless if not a faithless helpmate; and still more so, in finding that there was, as it were, especially reserved for me the affection of such a noble, right-minded creature as Bessy? My life, commenced in rags and poverty, had, by industry and exertion, and the kindness of others, step by step progressed to competence and every prospect of mundane happiness. Had I not, therefore, reason to be grateful, and to feel that there had been a little cherub who had watched over the life of Poor Jack? On my bended knees ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... you, not him; take me to the other end of the world.' And I'd only forty copecks; how could I take her away, what could I do? Why, I'd be lost. You see, I didn't know her then, I didn't understand her, I thought she wanted money, and that she wouldn't forgive my poverty. And so I fiendishly counted out the half of that three thousand, sewed it up, calculating on it, sewed it up before I was drunk, and after I had sewn it up, I went off to get drunk on the rest. Yes, that was base. Do ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... take, and not allow himself to be carried away by deceptive hopes. The poor creature's misery on being undeceived is so much the more dreadful, because he does not learn the truth until it is too late—until he has already fallen a victim to poverty and want. ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... him who I was, and that I was going to Berne but had quite lost myself by keeping out of all the high roads, to avoid falling into the hands of those who sought my destruction. He thereupon opened the door, received and entertained me with all the hospitality his poverty would admit of; regaled me with sour crout and some new laid eggs, the only provision he had, and clean straw with a kind of rug for a bed, he having no other for himself and wife. The good woman expressed as much ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... towers, being very white, makes an august show at a distance, being surrounded with little hills on both sides of the bay or river, covered with wood. But when you cross the ferry and come into the town, there is nothing but poverty and misery. The castle is a heap of rubbish uncovered, and these towers on the walls only standing vestiges of what Wales was when they had a prince of ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe
... the woman had better write directly to Madame, and that I was sure, if what she asserted was true, her application would be successful. Madame du Chiron followed my advice. The woman wrote she was in the lowest depth of poverty, and I learnt that Madame sent her six louis until she could gain more accurate information as to the truth of her story. Colin, who was commissioned to take the money, made inquiries of M. de Malvoisin, ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... there in my devastated room, hugging to me a little scrap of a dog, a desire to conceal my present poverty swept over me, just as I had always wanted to hide the tell-tale economies of our household years ago from my more affluent friends. I did not want pity. I was Ruth, of whom my family had predicted great things—vague great ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... a family in the capacity of Crammer's pup. The family was the Crammer and his daughter, a hard-headed, tight-mouthed, black-haired young woman who knew exactly what she wanted, and who meant to get it. Poverty had taught her to know what she wanted. Nature, and the folly of youth—not her own youth—taught her how to get it. There were several pups. She selected the most eligible, secretly married him, and to ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... the faintest sign of poverty around, for the room was tastily furnished in good old style; the carpet was thick, a silver coffee-pot glistened upon the table, and around the walls were goodly paintings of ancestral Mackhais, from the bare-armed, scale-armoured ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... at the hotel, one evening when Mr. Frederick Kinney also was a caller, and Mr. Kinney had not been tactful. In fact, though he adopted a humorous tone of voice, in expressing his, sympathy for people who, through the city's poverty in hotels, were obliged to stay at the Amberson, Mr. Kinney's intention was interpreted by the other visitor as not at all humorous, but, on the contrary, personal ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... thin garments, was in a rapture of meditation, wherein all that he saw was the beautiful fair face of the Mary of the Assumption, with the waves of her golden hair lying upon her shoulders, and the light of an eternal sun shining down upon her brow. Nello, reared in poverty, and buffeted by fortune, and untaught in letters, and unheeded by men, had the compensation or the curse which is called genius. No one knew it; he as little as any. No one knew it. Only, indeed, Patrasche, who, being with him always, saw him draw with chalk upon the stones ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various |
