Poverty- christiansquoting.org.uk

I have taken a vow of poverty. To annoy me send money.

Come away; poverty's catching. - Aphra Behn (1640 &endash; 1689)

..if the death of Christ on the cross is the true meaning of the Incarnation, then there is no gospel without the cross. Christmas by itself is no gospel. The life of Christ is no gospel. Even the resurrection, important as it is in the total scheme of things, is no gospel by itself. For the good news is not just that God became man, nor that God has spoken to reveal a proper way of life for us, or even that death, the great enemy, is conquered. Rather, the good news is that sin has been dealt with (of which the resurrection is a proof); that Jesus has suffered its penalty for us as our representative, so that we might never have to suffer it; and that therefore all who believe in him can look forward to heaven. ...Emulation of Christ s life and teaching is possible only to those who enter into a new relationship with God through faith in Jesus as their substitute. The resurrection is not merely a victory over death (though it is that) but a proof that the atonement was a satisfactory atonement in the sight of the Father (Rom 4:25); and that death, the result of sin, is abolished on that basis. Any gospel that talks merely of the Christ-event, meaning the Incarnation without the atonement, is a false gospel. Any gospel that talks about the love of God without pointing out that his love led him to pay the ultimate price for sin in the person of his Son on the cross is a false gospel. The only true gospel is of the one mediator (1 Tim. 2:5-6), who gave himself for us. Finally, just as there can be no gospel without the atonement as the reason for the Incarnation, so also there can be no Christian life without it. Without the atonement the Incarnation themeeasily becomes a kind of deification of the human and leads to arrogance and self advancement. With the atonement the true message of the life of Christ, and therefore also of the the life of the Christian man or woman, is humility and self sacrifice for the obvious needs of others. The Christian life is not indifference to those who are hungry or sick or suffering from some other lack. It is not contentment with our own abundance, neither the abundance of middle class living with home and cars and clothes and vacations, nor the abundance of education or even the spiritual abundance of good churches, Bibles, Bible teaching or Christian friends and acquaintances. Rather, it is the awareness that others lack these things and that we must therefore sacrifice many of our own interests in order to identify with them and thus bring them increasingly into the abundance we enjoy...We will live for Christ fully only when we are willing to be impoverished, if necessary, in order that others might be helped.--JAMES MONTGOMERY BOICE, Foundations of the Christian Faith

A greater poverty than that caused by money is the poverty of unawareness. Men and women go about the world unaware of the goodness, the beauty, the glories in it. Their souls are poor. It is better to have a poor pocketbook than to suffer from a poor soul. Thomas Dreier

The poor man wishes to conceal his poverty, and the rich man his wealth: the former fears lest he be despised, the latter lest he be plundered. - Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Give, Sympathise, Control - T S Eliot, The Wasteland

I used to think I was poor. Then they told me I wasn't poor, I was needy. Then they told me it was self-defeating to think of myself as needy. I was deprived. (Oh not deprived but rather underprivileged) Then they told me that underprivileged was overused. I was disadvantaged. I still don't have a dime. But I have a great vocabulary. Jules Feiffer

Neither great poverty nor great riches will hear reason. Henry Fielding

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means.I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. - Benjamin Franklin, in "The Encouragement of Idleness," 1766

The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility.--Eric Hoffer (1902-1983)_The True Believer_ [1951]

The inevitable consequence of poverty is dependence. Samuel Johnson: Dryden (Lives of the Poets)

Poverty will enforce dependence, and invite corruption; it will almost always produce a passive compliance with the wickedness of others; and there are few who do not learn by degrees to practise those crimes which they cease to censure.- Samuel Johnson: Rambler #57

What signifies, says some one, giving halfpence to beggars? they only lay it out in gin or tobacco. "And why should they be denied such sweeteners of their existence (says Johnson)? it is surely very savage to refuse them every possible avenue to pleasure, reckoned too coarse for our own acceptance. Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding; yet for the poor we delight in stripping it still barer, and are not ashamed to shew even visible displeasure, if ever the bitter taste is taken from their mouths." -- Hester Thrale Piozzi: Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson

He that pines with hunger, is in little care how others shall be fed.The poor man is seldom studious to make his grandson rich. - Samuel Johnson: Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.
Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993) Attributed.

You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money. P. J. O'Rourke

As society advances, the standard of poverty rises. - James Reston (1909 &endash; 1995)

Poverty is the only load which is the heavier the more loved ones there are to assist in bearing it. - Jean Paul Richter

And the mistake of the best men through generation after generation, has been that great one of thinking to help the poor by almsgiving, and by preaching of patience or of hope, and by every other means, emollient or consolatory, except the one thing which God orders for them, justice. --John Ruskin, "Unto This Last"

Poor and content is rich and rich enough. William Shakespeare. Othello. Act ii. Sc. 3.

Let us celebrate the poor,
Let us hawk them door to door.

There's market for their pain,
Votes and glory and money to gain.

Let us celebrate the Poor.

Their ills, their sins, their faulty diction,
Flavour our songs and spice our fiction

Their hopes and struggles and agonies,
Get us grants and consulting fees.
Thomas Sowell Poverty Pimp Poem.

The line between hunger and anger is a thin line.--John E. Steinbeck, "The Grapes of Wrath"

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty. - Mother Teresa, 1910 - 1997

We still have to find some way of combining Christian charity with sensible social policy-- Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power, Harper Collins,1995, p11

The more is given the less people will work for themselves, and the less they work the more their poverty will increase.
Leo Tolstoy,"Help for the Starving, Part II" January, 1892

Who, being loved, is poor?- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)