Pauperism

Pauperism (Lat. pauper, poor) is a term meaning poverty or generally the state of being poor, but in English usage particularly the condition of being a "pauper", i.e. in receipt of relief administered under the English Poor Laws.

Pauper's Monument, Charlemont Cemetery.

CONTENT : A - F , G - L , M - R , S - Z , See also , External links

Quotes

Quotes are arranged alphabetically by author

A - F

• All that is seen is my form, ant, fly, prince, and pauper.
  • Sri Sathya Sai Baba in: Rangaswami Parthasarathy GOD who Walked on Earth, Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd, 30 December 2011, p. 117

Many of them fell into the slough of pauperism, and were saved from starvation by public doles. - Thomas Spencer Baynes.

• Many of them fell into the slough of pauperism, and were saved from starvation by public doles.
  • Thomas Spencer Baynes in: The Encyclopaedia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and General Literature, Volume 13, C. Scribner's sons, 1881, p. 484

• INCOME, n. The natural and rational gauge and measure of respectability, the commonly accepted standards being artificial, arbitrary and fallacious; for, as "Sir Sycophas Chrysolater" in the play has justly remarked, "the true use and function of property (in whatsoever it consisteth --coins, or land, or houses, or merchant- stuff, or anything which may be named as holden of right to one's own subservience) as also of honors, titles, preferments and place, and all favor and acquaintance of persons of quality or ableness, are but to get money. Hence it followeth that all things are truly to be rated as of worth in measure of their serviceableness to that end; and their possessors should take rank in agreement thereto, neither the lord of an unproducing manor, howsoever broad and ancient, nor he who bears an unremunerate dignity, nor yet the pauper favorite of a king, being esteemed of level excellency with him whose riches are of daily accretion; and hardly should they whose wealth is barren claim and rightly take more honor than the poor and unworthy."
  • Ambrose Bierce in: The Devil's Dictionary, Digireads.com Publishing, 1 January 2004, p. 73

• A reporter meets interesting people. If he endures, he will get to know princes and presidents, popes and paupers, prostitutes and panderers.
  • Jim Bishop in MaryJanice Davidson Fish Out Of Water: Number 3 in series, Hachette UK, 6 February 2014 , p. 10

• In 1890 "General" Booth attracted further public attention by the publication of a work entitled "In Darkest England, and the Way Out", in which he proposed to remedy pauperism and vice by a series of ten expedients: (1) the city colony; (2) the farm colony; (3) the over-sea colony; (4) the household salvage brigade; (5) the rescue homes for fallen women; (6) deliverance for the drunkard; (7) the prison-gate brigade; (8) the poor man's bank; (9)(9) the poor man's lawyer; (io) White chapel-by the-Sea.
  • Hugh Chisholm in The Encyclopaedia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information, University Press, 1910, p. 240

• As regards pauperism, the government subsidizes Protestant and Catholic orphan houses.
  • Hugh Chisholm in: The Encyclopædia britannica: a dictionary of arts, sciences, literature and general information, Volume 17, The Encyclopædia Britannica Company, 1911, p. 468

• Important efforts were made to attract French colonists to the country, the colonization of Algeria appearing as a means towards the extinction of pauperism in the mother-country.
  • Hugh Chisholm, James Louis Garvin in: The Encyclopædia Britannica: a dictionary of arts, sciences, literature & general information, Volumes 1-2, The Encyclopaedia Britannica Co., Ltd., 1926, p. 652

• Wealth is an inborn attitude of mind, like poverty. The pauper who has made his pile may flaunt his spoils, but cannot wear them plausibly.
  • Jean Cocteau in: Top 100 Power Verbs: The Most Powerful Verbs and Phrases You Can Use to Win in Any Situation, FT Press, 20 June 2013, p. 283

• Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.
  • Adelle Davis in: Brian Tracy Million Dollar Habits: Proven Power Practices to Double and Triple Your Income, Entrepreneur Press, 2 May 2006, p. 207

• Society, during the last hundred years, has been alternately perplexed and encouraged, respecting the two great questions -- how shall the criminal and pauper be disposed of, in order to reduce crime and reform the criminal on the one hand, and, on the other, to diminish pauperism and restore the pauper to useful citizenship?
  • Dorothea Dix in: Barbara M. Brenzel Daughters of the State: A Social Portrait of the First Reform School for Girls in North America, 1856-1905, MIT Press, 1 January 1985, p. 27

• But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal — there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honourable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levellers, and in our courts all men are created equal.
  • Atticus Finch in: Benjamin Baez Affirmative Action, Hate Speech, and Tenure: Narratives About Race and Law in the Academy, Routledge, 16 December 2013

G - L

The present distress is undoubtedly insufferable. Pauperism must go...- Mohandas Gandhi.

industrialization is no remedy.

• The present distress is undoubtedly insufferable. Pauperism must go. But industrialization is no remedy. The evil does not lie in the use of bullock-carts. It lies in our selfishness and want of consideration for our neighbours. If we have no love for neighbours, no change, however revolutionary, can do us any good.
  • Mohandas Gandhi in: Gandhi: Selected Writings, Courier Dover Publications, 7 May 2012, p. 246

• Not under its own detested name; it will call itself apprenticeship; it will put on the disguise of laws to prevent pauperism, by providing that every colored man who does not work in some prescribed way shall be arrested, and placed at the disposal of the authorities,- or it will do its work by means of laws regulating wages and labor.
  • James A. Garfield in: The works of James Abram Garfield. Volume 1, Best Books on, 1 January 1882, p. 90

• Individual acts of aristocratic generosity do not eliminate pauperism; they perpetuate it.
  • Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr in: Jean-Paul Sartre Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr, U of Minnesota Press, 1 February 2012, p. 198

• As population thickens in your cities, and the pressure of want is felt, the gaunt spectre of pauperism will stalk among you, and Socialism and Communism claim to be heard. Truly America has a great future before her——great in care and responsibility – great in true glory if she is guided in wisdom and righteousness - great in shame if she fails.
  • Charles E. George in: New Hampshire State Magazine, Volume 5, Security of the Selective Franchise Republic, H.H. Metcalf, p. 148

• And as he saw the beginning of wealth, he noted the first appearance of pauperism. He saw degradation forming as he saw the advent of leisure and affluence.
  • Henry George in:HIV and AIDS Prevention, Trafford Publishing, 2004, p. 8

• The respect for authority, the presumption in favor of those who have won intellectual reputation, is within reasonable limits, both prudent and becoming. But it should not be carried too far, and there are some things especially as to which it behooves us all to use our own judgment and to maintain free minds. For not only does the history of the world show that undue deference to authority has been the potent agency through which errors have been enthroned and superstitions perpetuated, but there are regions of thought in which the largest powers and the greatest acquirements cannot guard against aberrations or assure deeper insight. One may stand on a box and look over the heads of his fellows, but he no better sees the stars. The telescope and the microscope reveal depths which to the unassisted vision are closed. Yet not merely do they bring us no nearer to the cause of suns and animal-cula, but in looking through them the observer must shut his eyes to what lies about him. That intention is at the expense of extension is seen in the mental as in the physical sphere. A man of special learning may be a fool as to common relations. And that he who passes for an intellectual prince may be a moral pauper there are examples enough to show.
  • Henry George in: A Perplexed Philosopher: An Examination of Herbert Spencer, Cosimo, Inc., 1 October 2006, p. 15

• Abolish plutocracy if you would abolish poverty. As millionaires increase, pauperism grows. The more millionaires, the more paupers.
  • Rutherford B. Hayes in: Michael Lawrence Faulkner et al.,Power Verbs for Presenters: Hundreds of Verbs and Phrases to Pump Up Your Speeches and Presentations, FT Press, 19 February 2013, p. 55

Original asylum building at Stanley Royd (since converted into flats) - His indefatigable exertions in the detection and correction of the great abuses then existing in the management of the York Lunatic asylum, and the formation of another and very extensive establishment for the care and protection of pauper lunatics at Wakefield, will be monuments of his humble spirit and perseverance and philanthropy.- Godfrey Higgins.

• His indefatigable exertions in the detection and correction of the great abuses then existing in the management of the York Lunatic asylum, and the formation of another and very extensive establishment for the care and protection of pauper lunatics at Wakefield, will be monuments of his humble spirit and perseverance and philanthropy.
  • Godfrey Higgins Obituary of Godfrey Higgins, Doncaster Gazette, 16 August 1833. Quoted in: Godfrey Higgins, burghwallis.com

• To continue in poverty for any long period means in the end the loss of the power of doing work, and to be unable to work means in the end pauperism.
  • Robert Hunter (author) in: Ralph Waldo Trine In the Fire of the Heart, Cosimo, Inc., 1 October 2006, p. 46

• The evils of poverty are not barren, but procreative, and... the workers in poverty, are in spite of themselves, giving to the world a litter of miserables, whose degeneracy is so stubborn and fixed that reclamation is almost impossible, especially when the only process of reclamation must consist in trying to force the pauper, vagrant, and weakling back into that struggle with poverty which is all of the time defeating stronger and better natures than theirs.
  • Robert Hunter in: Richard M. Abrams The Issues of the Populist and Progressive Eras, 1892-1912, University of South Carolina Press, 1970, p. 26

• Rattle his bones over the stones!
  He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns!
  • James Joyce in: Zack R. Bowen Musical Allusions in the Works of James Joyce: Early Poetry through Ulysses, SUNY Press, 1974, p. 102

• By default, we have created a "system" of nursing-home care for the aged in which middle-class people pay exorbitant rates to for-profit nursing-home entrepreneurs - and then when private resources are consumed and the patient qualifies as a pauper, the nursing home begins billing Medicaid. This is precisely the antithesis of social citizenship; instead of the poor being accorded the dignity associated with the middle class, equality of treatment is achieved by making the middle class undergo pauperization.
  • Robert Kuttner in: The Economic Illusion: False Choices Between Prosperity and Social Justice, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987, p. 239

America has become one of the foremost countries in regard to the depth of the abyss which lies between the handful of arrogant multinationals who wallow in moral filth and material luxury, and the millions of working people who constantly live on the verge of pauperism. - Vladimir Lenin.

• America has become one of the foremost countries in regard to the depth of the abyss which lies between the handful of arrogant multinationals who wallow in moral filth and material luxury, and the millions of working people who constantly live on the verge of pauperism.
  • Vladimir Lenin in: Tim Buck Canada and the Russian Revolution: The Impact of the World's First Socialist Revolution on Labor and Politics in Canada, Volume 2, Progress Books, 1967, p. 39

• The first – that in relation to wrongs, misdemeanors and non-performance of contracts. The other embraces all in which, in its nature, and without wrong requires combined action, as public roads and highways, public schools, charities, pauperism, orphanage, estates of the deceased, and the machinery of government itself.
  • Abraham Lincoln in: Tim Davidson The Essential Lincoln, Aquitaine Media Corp, 1 April 2009, p. 21

• Contrast Pilate with the prisoner before him, Jesus. Pilate was deeply concerned with position and power. Jesus cared for none of these things. Which was the richer in all that makes a great personality and true success in life? Contrast Nero, the Roman Emperor, and the prisoner named Paul who was beheaded in Nero's reign. Who was the real pauper, Nero or Paul?
  • Halford Edward Luccock in: Unfinished Business: Short Diversions on Religious Themes, Harper, 1956, p. 108

M - R

Thinking and Thought: Thoughts are funny little things, They can make paupers or make kings.

• Thinking and Thought: Thoughts are funny little things, They can make paupers or make kings.]]
  • Sidney Madwed in: Quotes about Thoughts and Thinking, Quotations Book, p. 25

• When they see me holding fish, they can see that I am comfortable with kings as well as with paupers.
  • Imelda Marcos in: Joseph Demakis The Ultimate Book of Quotations, Lulu.com, p. 324

• My object in all my proceedings has been simply to establish the independence of Ireland for the benefit of all the people of Ireland — noblemen, clergymen, … in politics did I not think it necessary to do all in my power to make an end of the horrible scenes the country presents — the pauperism and the starvation, and the crime and the vice, and the hatred of all classes against each other. I thought that there should be an end to that horrible system which, while it lasted, gave me no peace of mind; for I could not enjoy anything in my country so long as I saw my countrymen forced to be vicious, forced To hate each other, and degraded to the level of paupers and brutes.
  • John Martin (Young Irelander) in: Philip Henry Bagenal The American Irish and Their Influence on Irish Politics, Roberts bros., 1882, p. 11

• In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.
  • Herman Melville in Moby Dick, New American library, 1892, p. 46

• The miseries of poverty are no longer glossed over by such political assurances as Redburn's belief that “to be a born American citizen seems a guarantee against pauperism; and this, perhaps, springs from the virtue of a vote.
  • Herman Melville in: John P. McWilliams Hawthorne, Melville, and the American Character: A Looking-glass Business, CUP Archive, 1984 - American literature, p. 177

• The picture which Isaiah presents of the Judean masses is most unfavorable. In his view, the mass-man be he high or be he lowly, rich or poor, prince or pauper gets off very badly. He appears as not only weak-minded and weak-willed, but as by consequence knavish, arrogant, grasping, dissipated, unprincipled, unscrupulous. The mass-woman also gets off badly, as sharing all the mass-man’s untoward qualities, and contributing a few of her own in the way of vanity and laziness, extravagance and foible.
  • Albert Jay Nock, in: Leonard E. Read The freedom philosophy, The Foundation for Economic Education, 1990, p. 128

• There's a grim one-horse hearse in a jolly round trot;
  To the churchyard a pauper is going I wot;
  The road it is rough, and the hearse has no springs,
  And hark to the dirge that the sad driver sings
  Rattle his bones over the stones,
  He's only a pauper whom nobody owns.
  • Thomas Noel in: John Williamson Palmer Folk Songs, C. Scribner, 1864, p. 17

• A rich man who is stingy is the worst pauper.
  • Yiddish Proverb in: Eve Tal Cursing Columbus, Cinco Puntos Press, 20 August 2013: , p. 30

• Prayer sometimes dulls the hunger of the pauper, like a mother's finger thrust into the mouth of her starving baby.
  • Isaac Leib Peretz, in Journal of a Rabbi, Living Books, 1966, p. 48

The true line to be drawn between pauperism and honest poverty is the clothes-line. With it begins the effort to be clean that is the first and the best evidence of a desire to be honest. - Jacob Riis.

• The true line to be drawn between pauperism and honest poverty is the clothes-line. With it begins the effort to be clean that is the first and the best evidence of a desire to be honest.
  • Jacob Riis in: How the Other Half Lives, Applewood Books, 15 March 2011, p. 46

• He was a confidence-man, pauper, tutor, blackmailer, paedophile, translator – and author of seven novels and a number of short stories. Rolfe was a trickster whose failed life stank to himself as to the few friends whom he had and betrayed. But he was a fascinating figure: a bore, but also a pseudo-Borgian freak whose vindictiveness and paranoia have deservedly become legendary.
  • Frederick Rolfe in: Martin Seymour-Smith The new guide to modern world literature, P. Bedrick Books, 1985, p. 287

• Anything that encourages pauperism, anything that relaxes the manly fiber and lowers self-respect, is an unmixed evil. The soup kitchen style of philanthropy is as thoroughly demoralizing as most forms of vice or oppression, and it is of course particularly revolting when some corporation or private individual undertakes it, but even in a spirit of foolish charity, but for purposes of self-advertisement.
  • Theodore Roosevelt in: The strenuous life; essays and addresses, Best Books on, 1 January 1906, p. 108

• Anything that encourages pauperism, anything that relaxes the manly fiber and lowers self-respect, is an unmixed evil.
  • Theodore Roosevelt in: The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, Volume 38; Volume 60, Century Company, 1900,

S - Z

• It torments landlords, paupers and lovers of pleasure. It torments us through the sweet sounds of music and parties. It torments us through beautiful beds, palaces and decorations. It torments us through the darkness of the five evil passions.
  • Sri Guru Granth Sahib in Marilynn Hughes in: The Voice of the Prophets: Wisdom of the Ages, Volume 2 of 12, Lulu.com, 1 November 2005, p. 273

The third group [of society] are those irresponsible and reckless ones having little regard for the consequences of their acts, or whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers. Many of this group are diseased, feeble-minded, and are of the pauper element dependent upon the normal and fit members of society for their support. There is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped. - Margaret Sanger.

• The third group [of society] are those irresponsible and reckless ones having little regard for the consequences of their acts, or whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers. Many of this group are diseased, feeble-minded, and are of the pauper element dependent upon the normal and fit members of society for their support. There is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped.
  • Margaret Sanger in: Lynne E. Ford Encyclopedia of Women and American Politics: A Moral Necessity for Birth Control, Encyclopedia of Women and American Politics, Infobase Publishing, 1 January 2009

• I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king, I've been up and down and over and out, And I know one thing, each time I find myself flat on my face, I pick myself up and get back in the race.
  • Frank Sinatra in: James B. Clay Beyond the Garden: no data, Author House, 30 June 2010, p. 90

• Society, during the last hundred years, has been alternately perplexed and encouraged, respecting the two great questions -- how shall the criminal and pauper be disposed of, in order to reduce crime and reform the criminal on the one hand, and, on the other, to diminish pauperism and restore the pauper to useful citizenship?
  • Thomas Theobald in William C. Sneed A Report on the History and Mode of Management of the Kentucky Penitentiary from Its Origin, in 1798, to March 1, 1860, Senate of Kentucky, 1860, p. 219

• He is glad to give and distribute; and clamorous pauperism feasteth. While honest Labor, pining, hideth his sharp ribs.
  • Martin Tupper in: Proverbial Philosophy: a Book of Thoughts and Arguments: Originally Treated … First and Second Series, Hooker, 1845, p. 74

• India has 2,000,000 gods, and worships them all. In religion, other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.
  • Mark Twain in: William E. Phipps Mark Twain's Religion, Mercer University Press, 2003, p. 196

• I have not professionally dealt in truth. Many when they come to die have spent all the truth that was in them, and enter the next world as paupers. I have saved up enough to make an astonishment there.
  • Mark Twain in: Mark Twain's Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review, Univ of Wisconsin Press, 25 February 2010 , p. 42

• I pray thee of thy grace believe me, I did but speak the truth, most dread lord; for I am the meanest among thy subjects, being a pauper born, and 'tis by a sore mischance and accident I am here, albeit I was therein nothing blameful. I am but young to die, and thou canst save me with one little word. Oh speak it, sir!
  • Mark Twain in: The Prince and the Pauper, University of California Press, 5 February 2011, p. 33

• A line will take us hours maybe;
  Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
  Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
  Better go down upon your marrow-bones
  And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
  Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
  For to articulate sweet sounds together
  Is to work harder than all these, and yet
  Be thought an idler by the noisy set
  Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
  The martyrs call the world.
  • William Butler Yeats in: The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition, Simon and Schuster, 1 October 1997, 78p.