Beggar Quotes

“We do not teach and practice community of goods but we teach and testify the Word of the Lord, that all true believers in Christ are of one body (I Cor. 12:13), partakers of one bread (I Cor. 10:17), have one God and one Lord (Eph. 4). Seeing then that they are one, ... it is Christian and reasonable that they also have divine love among them and that one member cares for another, for both the Scriptures and nature teach this. They show mercy and love, as much as is in them. They do not suffer a beggar among them. They have pity on the wants of the saints. They receive the wretched. They take strangers into their houses. They comfort the sad. They lend to the needy. They clothe the naked. They share their bread with the hungry. They do not turn their face from the poor nor do they regard their decrepit limbs and flesh (Isa. 58). This is the kind of brotherhood we teach.”

— Menno Simons

“He wrapped himself in quotations - as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.”

— Rudyard Kipling

“I sat in the gradually chilling room, thinking of my whole past the way a drowning man is supposed to, and it seemed part of the present, part of the gray cold and the beggar woman without a face and the moulting birds frozen to their own filth in the Orangerie. I know now I was in the throes of some small glandular crisis, a sublimated bilious attack, a flick from the whip of melancholia, but then it was terrifying ... nameless ...”

— Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

“But if we never hug a harlot, befriend a beggar, or forgive our enemy seventy times seven, then we confess grace with our lips but mock it with our lives.”

— Preston Sprinkle

“Indolent and unworthy the beggar may be-but that is not your concern: It is better, said Joseph Smith, to feed ten impostors than to run the risk of turning away one honest petition.”

— Hugh Nibley

“Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the laws on the statutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root.”

— Emma Goldman

“Do you think I'm deaf?" the deaf beggar asked. "I'm not deaf at all. It's just that it isn't worth hearing a whole world full of people complaining about what they lack." He told the story of a wealthy country where people believed they were living 'the good life.' The country had a garden of riches, of so many sights and smells and sounds that the people in the country literally lost their senses, spoiled by everything they had already seen and heard and smelled and tasted and touched, until the beggar taught them how to use their senses again.”

— Dara Horn

“I'll be any man you want. A king or a beggar or a farmer or a killer. But I'll never be the man who can let you walk away.”

— Kit Rocha

“For the very first time Andrew realized that life, real life, had no connection with the way people spent their days, whose lips they kissed, what medals were pinned on them, or the shoes they mended. Life, real life went on soundlessly ... ultimately there was no difference between Queen Victoria and the most wretched beggar in London: both were complex machines made up of bone, organ, and tissue, whose fuel was the breath of God.”

— Félix J. Palma

“Then they gave me a loaf of bread and told me to walk through the forest and give some to anyone who asked. I did exactly what they told me, and the second beggar-woman was a fairy in disguise, but instead of saying that whenever I spoke, diamonds and roses would drop from my mouth, she said that since I was so kind, I would never have any problems with my teeth."
"Really? Did it work?"
"Well, I haven't had a toothache since I met her."
"I'd much rather have good teeth than have diamonds and roses drop out of my mouth whenever I said something”

— Patricia C. Wrede

“What good was owning the world when he'd have no choice except to defend himself against every person in it? Personally, he'd rather be a beggar with one true friend than a prince surrounded by two-faced assassins.' (Aiden)”

— Sherrilyn Kenyon

“A hairy beggar kneeling by a puddle of vomit turns out to be a dog.”

— David Mitchell

“When the mind, for want of being sufficiently reduced by recollection at our first engaging in devotion, has contracted certain bad habits of wandering and dissipation, they are difficult to overcome, and commonly draw us, even against our wills, to the things of the earth.
I believe one remedy for this is to confess our faults, and to humble ourselves before God. I do not advise you to use multiplicity of words in prayer: many words and long discourses being often the occasions of wandering. Hold yourself in prayer before God, like a dumb or paralytic beggar at a rich man's gate. Let it be your business to keep your mind in the presence of the Lord. If it sometimes wander and withdraw itself from Him, do not much disquiet yourself for that: trouble and disquiet serve rather to distract the mind than to re-collect it: the will must bring it back in tranquility. If you persevere in this manner, God will have pity on you.”

— Brother Lawrence

“You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve," said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content.”

— C.S. Lewis

“I don't know whether the spider perhaps does not hate the fly he has marked and is snaring. Dear little fly! It seems to me that the victim is loved, or at least may be loved. Here I love my enemy. I am delighted, for instance, that she is so beautiful. I am delighted, madam, that you are so haughty and majestic. If you were meeker it would not be so delightful. You have spat on me
and I am triumphant. If you were literally to spit in my face I should really not be angry because you
are my victim; mine and not his. How fascinating was that idea! Yes, the secret consciousness of power is more insupportably delightful than open domination. If I were a millionaire I believe I should take pleasure in going about in the oldest clothes and being taken for a destitute man, almost a beggar, being jostled and despised. The consciousness of the truth would be enough for me.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“It is not from your own goods that you give to the beggar; it is a portion of his own that you are restoring to him. The Earth belongs to all. So you are paying back a debt and think you are making a gift to which you are not bound.”

— Saint Ambrose

“Every fulfilled wish we wrest from the world is really like alms that keep the beggar alive today so that he can starve again tomorrow.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“What you powerfully hold
In your thought-world
Will make you either
A street beggar
Or a great king.”

— Sri Chinmoy

“The beggar wears all colors fearing none.”

— Charles Lamb

“Is an artist much more than a beggar?”

— Clara Schumann

“The beggar is the only person in the universe not obliged to study appearance.”

— Don Herold

“A brigand, a barber, a beggar, two orphans, and a boy whore. With such do we defend the realms of men.”

— George R.R. Martin

“No more than he knew that the Beggar King would die young, or that Khal Drogo would follow him into the grave. Very little of what the fat man has anticipated has come to pass.”

— George R.R. Martin

“Better a beggar than a thief.”

— George R.R. Martin

“People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion-these are the two things that govern us. And yet-”

— Oscar Wilde

“You'd be as rich as kings if you could find it, and you know it's here, and you stand there skulking. There wasn't one of you dared face Bill, and I did it
a blind man! And I'm to lose my chance for you! I'm to be a poor, crawling beggar, sponging for rum, when I might be rolling in a coach! If you had the pluck of a weevil in a biscuit you would catch them still.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson

“This I said in the Irish way, about which there is allowed to be something very engaging. It's a remarkable thing, and a testimony to the love with which our nation is regarded, that this address scarce ever fails in a handsome fellow. I cannot tell how often I have seen a private soldier escape the horse, or a beggar wheedle out a good alms, by a touch of the brogue.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson

“Sit with a merchant or sit with a beggar, and it'll always be the beggar who buys your first drink.”

— R. Scott Bakker

“In ease of body and peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon the same level, and the beggar who suns himself by the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for.”

— Adam Smith

“Oswald: Why dost thou use me thus? I know thee not.
Kent: Fellow, I know thee.
Oswald: What dost thou know me for?
Kent: A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy; worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch; one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou denyest the least syllable of thy addition.”

— William Shakespeare

“Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks.”

— William Shakespeare

“Well the seaport, all seaports in Britain whether it's Glasgow or Newcastle or ... or Liverpool, any of the seaports, I've got this kind of knock about, beggar and the Lord will provide feeling about it.”

— Derek Taylor

“Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. ... Love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely.”

— Emma Goldman

“When a slave rebels against his master, the situation presented is of one man pitted against another, under
a cruel sky, far from the exalted realms of principles. The final result is merely the murder of a man. The
servile rebellions, peasant risings, beggar outbreaks, rustic revolts, all advance the concept of a principle
of equality, a life for a life, which despite every kind of mystification and audacity will always be found
in the purest manifestations of the revolutionary spirit-”

— Albert Camus

“It was a scene of such beauty it caught all his attention. Some things beggar likeness, he thought. He”

— Frank Herbert

“The poor are always ragged and dirty, in very picturesque clothes, and on their poor shoes lies the earth of the Lacustrine period. And yet what a privilege it is to be even a beggar in Rome!”

— M. E. W. Sherwood

“Over the last 10 years, India's perception has gone from being a beggar country to an economic superpower.”

— Vivek Wadhwa

“Do you realise that when you give a schilling to a beggar you are giving it to yourself?Do you realise that when you help a dog over a stile you yourself are being helped?Do you realise when you kick a man when he is down, you are kicking yourslef?Give him another kick, you deserve it!”

— Wei Wu Wei

“A coin is turned around before it is handed to the beggar, yet a child is unflinchingly tossed into cosmic bruteness.”

— Peter Wessel Zapffe

“I have known exile and a wild passion Of longing changing to a cold ache. King, beggar and fool , I have been all by turns, Knowing the body's sweetness, the mind 's treason ; Taliesin still, I show you a new world , risen, Stubborn with beauty , out of the heart 's need .”

— R.S. Thomas

“The morality of an action depends on the motive from which we act. If I fling half a crown to a beggar with intention to break his head and he picks it up and buy victuals with it, the physical effect is good. But with respect to me the action is very wrong.”

— Samuel Johnson

“Sadder than destitution, sadder than a beggar is the man who eats alone in public. Nothing more contradicts the laws of man or beast, for animals always do each other the honor of sharing or disputing each other's food.”

— Jean Baudrillard

“A ragamuffin knows he's only a beggar at the door of God's mercy.”

— Brennan Manning

“"Do you love me?"; "Are you my friend?". The One who scrutinizes hearts (cf. Rom 8:27), makes himself a beggar of love and questions us on the one truly essential issue, a premiss and condition for feeding his sheep, his lambs, his Church. May every ministry be based on this intimacy with the Lord; living from him is the measure of our ecclesial service which is expressed in the readiness to obey, to humble ourselves, as we heard in the Letter to the Philippians, and for the total gift of self.”

— Pope Francis

“Remember, frustration is out of expectation, and ego is always expecting. The ego is a beggar.”

— Rajneesh

“A man is the prisoner of his power. A topical memory makes him an almanac; a talent for debate, disputant; skill to get money makes him a miser, that is, a beggar. Culture reduces these inflammations by invoking the aid of other powers against the dominant talent, and by appealing to the rank of powers. It watches success.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“For a beggar to live at court is not so much as the King to dwell with him in his cottage.”

— William Gurnall

“Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail, And say there is no sin but to be rich; And being rich, my virtue then shall be To say there is no vice but beggary”

— William Shakespeare

“I see, sir, you are liberal in offers. You taught me first to beg, and now methinks You teach me how a beggar should be answered.”

— William Shakespeare

“To me there is no difference whether president, beggar, or king.”

— Dalai Lama