Nature never said to me: Do not be poor; still less did she say: Be rich; her cry to me was always: Be independent.
Nicolas de Chamfort

Change of fashion is the tax levied by the industry of the poor on the vanity of the rich.
Nicolas de Chamfort

Lyrics have to be underwritten. That's why poets generally make poor lyric writers because the language is too rich. You get drowned in it.
Stephen Sondheim

I think people really marry far too much; it is such a lottery after all, and for a poor woman a very doubtful happiness.
Queen Victoria

Born poor, but of honored and humble people, I am particularly proud to die poor.
Pope John XXIII

We weren't wealthy but we definitely weren't poor. We were incredibly rich because there was a wonderful community in Shepherd's Bush, where I grew up. All my friends were into villainy and crime.
Roger Daltrey

Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.
Anacharsis

What we think of as our sensitivity is only the higher evolution of terror in a poor dumb beast. We suffer for nothing. Our own death wish is our only real tragedy.
Mario Puzo

Badges mean nothing in themselves, but they mark a certain achievement and they are a link between the rich and the poor. For when one girl sees a badge on a sister Scout's arm, if that girl has won the same badge, it at once awakens an interest and sympathy between them.
Juliette G. Low

There's something really great and romantic about being poor and sleeping on couches.
Ben Affleck

Live rich, die poor; never make the mistake of doing it the other way round.
Walter Annenberg

Almost every desire a poor man has is a punishable offence.
Louis-Ferdinand Celine

The poor are prevented from thinking by the discipline of others, the rich by their own.
Theodor Adorno

Proletarian language is dictated by hunger. The poor chew words to fill their bellies.
Theodor Adorno

The man who says he is willing to meet you halfway is usually a poor judge of distance.
Laurence J. Peter

A poor life this if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.
W. H. Davies

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
Milan Kundera

We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet.
E. M. Forster

The poor despise labor when performed by slaves.
George Mason

I'm scared to death of being poor. It's like a fat girl who loses 500 pounds but is always fat inside. I grew up poor and will always feel poor inside. It's my pet paranoia.
Cher