Ap. My poverty, but not my will, consents.
Rom. I pay thy poverty, and not thy will.
Steep'd me in poverty to the very lips.
In ev'ry sorrowing soul I pour'd delight,
And poverty stood smiling in my sight.
This mournful truth is ev'rywhere confess'd,--
Slow rises worth by poverty depress'd.
Philips, whose touch harmonious could remove
The pangs of guilty power and hapless love!
Rest here, distress'd by poverty no more;
Here find that calm thou gav'st so oft before;
Sleep undisturb'd within this peaceful shrine,
Till angels wake thee with a note like thine!
All this [wealth] excludes but one evil,--poverty.
And rustic life and poverty
Grow beautiful beneath his touch.
With one hand he put
A penny in the urn of poverty,
And with the other took a shilling out.
He is now fast rising from affluence to poverty.
Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh, that is to say over fear: fear of poverty, of suffering, of calumny, of illness, of loneliness and of death. There is no real piety without heroism. Heroism is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage.
So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man.
The destruction of the poor is their poverty.
Give me neither poverty nor riches.
Poverty is its own religion
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
I worked myself up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.
Simplicity doesn't mean to live in misery and poverty. You have what you need, and you don't want to have what you don't need.
We have not yet reached the goal but.. we shall soon, with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty shall be banished from this nation.
I know that a man who shows me his wealth is like the beggar who shows me his poverty; they are both looking for alms from me, the rich man for the alms of my envy, the poor man for the alms of my guilt.
The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.
The Fir-Tree and the Bramble A fir-tree said boastingly to the Bramble, You are useful for nothing at all; while I am everywhere used for roofs and houses. The Bramble answered: 'You poor creature, if you would only call to mind the axes and saws which are about to hew you down, you would have reason to wish that you had grown up a Bramble, not a Fir-Tree. Better poverty without care, than riches with.
Thomas a Kempis speaks for all the ages when he represents Jesus as saying to him, "A wise lover regards not so much the gift of him who loves, as the love of him who gives. He esteems affection rather than valuables, and sets all gifts below the Beloved. A noble-minded lover rests not in the gift, but in Me above every gift." The sustaining power of the Beloved Presence has through the ages made the sickbed sweet and the graveside triumphant; transformed broken hearts and relations; brought glory to drudgery, poverty and old age; and turned the martyr's stake or noose into a place of coronation.
Feast of Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, Teacher, 430 Great art Thou, O Lord, and highly to be praised; great is Thy power, yea, and Thy wisdom is infinite. And man would praise Thee, because he is one of Thy creatures; yea, man, though he bears about with him his mortality, the proof of his sin, the proof that Thou, O God, dost resist the proud, yet would man praise Thee, because he is one of Thy creatures. Thou dost prompt us thereto, making it a joy to praise Thee; for Thou hast created us unto Thyself, and our heart finds no rest until it rests in Thee. Grant me, O Lord, to know and understand which comes first, to call upon Thee, or to praise Thee, and which comes first, to know Thee or to call upon Thee. ... The Confessions of St. Augustine August 29, 1998 Instead of pursuing her appointed path of separation, persecution, world-hatred, poverty, and non-resistance, [the Church] has used... Scripture to justify her in lowering her purpose to the civilization of the world, the acquisition of wealth, the use of an imposing ritual, the erection of magnificent churches, the invocation of God's blessing upon the conflicts of armies, and the division of an equal brotherhood into "clergy" and "laity".
Now the trumpet summons us againânot as a call to bear arms, though arms we needânot as a call to battle, though embattled we areâbut a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation"âa struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty and war itself.
Poverty within is as dangerous as poverty without.