Samuel Johnson Poverty Quotations

Poverty has, in large cities, very different appearances; it is often concealed in splendour, and often in extravagance.

This mournful truth is ev'rywhere confess'd,- Slow rises worth by poverty depress'd

To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.

Riches exclude only one inconvenience,--that is, poverty.

It is the care of a very great part of mankind to conceal their indigence from the rest. They support themselves by temporary expedients, and every day is lost in contriving for to-morrow.

He who is extravagant will quickly become poor; and poverty will enforce dependence, and invite corruption.

A man guilty of poverty easily believes himself suspected.

The inevitable consequence of poverty is dependence.

He that thinks he can afford to be negligent is not far from being poor.

This mournful truth is everywhere confessed, slow rises worth by poverty depressed.

It is the great privilege of poverty to be happy and yet unenvied, to be healthy with physic, secure without a guard, and to obtain from the bounty of nature what the great and wealthy are compelled to procure by the help of art.

Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, sickness and captivity would, without this comfort, be insupportable.

All this [wealth] excludes but one evil, poverty.

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.