quotations about beggars & begging
All religions have honored the beggar. For he proves that in a matter at the same time as prosaic and holy, banal and regenerative as the giving of alms, intellect and morality, consistency and principles are miserably inadequate.
WALTER BENJAMIN
Reflections
The highest price we can pay for anything is to ask it.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Imaginary Conversations
One beggar bideth woe that another by the door should go.
ERASMUS
Adagia
What is got by begging costs dear.
ITALIAN PROVERB
A beggar's scrip is never filled.
RICHARD TAVERNER
Proverbs
A shameless beggar must have a short denial.
THOMAS FULLER
Gnomologia
You call that begging? Oh, Kitten, you can do better than that.
JEANIENE FROST
Home for the Holidays
Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
Better to die a beggar than to live a beggar.
THOMAS FULLER
Gnomologia
Sue a beggar and get a louse.
EDMUND GAYTON
Festivous Notes on Don Quixote
Most panhandlers are not interested in regular employment, particularly not minimum-wage labor, which many believe would scarcely be more profitable than panhandling.
OM PRAKASH GOYAL
Anti-social Patterns of Begging and Beggars
There may be rich beggars, and unworthy beggars, but beggars on the whole mean poverty and need and suffering. And almsgiving means that the world in which they exist recognizes their demand--for nothing really continues permanently without some kind of sanction from the community.
HARRISON RHODES
"The Business of Begging", Harper's Weekly, December 13, 1913
Begging is much more difficult than it looks. Contrary to popular belief, it's a high art form that takes years of dedicated practice to master.
SOL LUCKMAN
Beginner's Luke
This is neither begging, borrowing, nor robbery;
Yet it hath a twang of them all.
PHILIP MASSINGER
The Guardian
Contrary to common belief, panhandlers and homeless people are not necessarily one and the same. Many studies have found that only a small percentage of homeless people panhandle, and only a small percentage of panhandlers are homeless.
OM PRAKASH GOYAL
Anti-social Patterns of Begging and Beggars
He went among vendors and beggars and wild street preachers haranguing a lost world with vigor unknown to the sane.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Suttree
I'd just as soon be a beggar as king,
And the reason I'll tell you for why:
A king cannot swagger, nor drink like a beggar,
Nor be half so happy as I.
CECIL SHARPE
Folk Songs from Somerset
Beggars, beggars are the happy folk;
They love one another. Long live beggars!
PIERRE-JEAN DE BERANGER
Les Gueux
When beggars die, there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Julius Caesar
You taught me first to beg, and now, methinks,
You teach me how a beggar should be answer'd.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Merchant of Venice