Quotes

• Et, se venons tout d'un père et d'une mere, Adam et Eve, en quoi poent il dire ne monstrer que il sont mieux signeur que nous, fors parce que il nous font gaaignier et labourer ce que il despendent? Il sont vestu de velours et de camocas fourés de vair et de gris, et nous sommes vesti de povres draps. Il ont les vins, les espisses et les bons pains, et nous avons le soille, le retrait et le paille, et buvons l'aige. Ils ont le sejour et les biaux manoirs, et nous avons le paine et le travail, et le pleue et le vent as camps, et faut que de nous viengne et de nostre labeur ce dont il tiennent les estas.
  • If we all spring from a single father and mother, Adam and Eve, how can they claim or prove that they are lords more than us, except by making us produce and grow the wealth which they spend? They are clad in velvet and camlet lined with squirrel and ermine, while we go dressed in coarse cloth. They have the wines, the spices and the good bread: we have the rye, the husks and the straw, and we drink water. They have shelter and ease in their fine manors, and we have hardship and toil, the wind and the rain in the fields. And from us must come, from our labour, the things which keep them in luxury
  • John Ball, quoted in Jean Froissart Chroniques (1369-1400), Bk. 2; translation from Jean Froissart (trans. Geoffrey Brereton) Chronicles (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968) p. 212.

• Were all men equal to-night, some would get the start by rising an hour earlier to-morrow.
  • Elizabeth Gaskell Mary Barton (1848), ch. 37.

• Il n'y a de société vivante que celle qui est animée par l'inégalité et l'injustice.
  • The only living societies are those which are animated by inequality and injustice.
  • Paul Claudel Conversations dans le Loir-et-Cher (Paris: Gallimard, [1935] 1984) p. 22; translation from The Independent, February 6, 2001.

• Where Plenty smiles - alas! she smiles for few,
  And those who taste not, yet behold her store,
  Are as the slaves that dig the golden ore,
  The wealth around them makes them doubly poor.
  • George Crabbe The Village, Book 1, line 136 (1783)

• For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.
  • Matthew 25:29.

• For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.
  • Matthew 25:29.

• Ye have the poor with you always.
  • Mark 14:7.

• It's the same the whole world over:
  It's the poor what gets the blame.
  It's the rich what gets the pleasure;
  Ain't it all a bloomin' shame.
  • Chorus of "She Was Poor but She Was Honest", an anonymous street ballad of the late 19th century; cited from Eric Partridge (ed. Paul Beale) A Dictionary of Catch Phrases (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986) p. 267.

• O esforço humano consegue, quando muito, converter um proletariado faminto numa burguesia farta; mas surge logo das entranhas da sociedade um proletariado pior. Jesus tinha razão: haverá sempre pobres entre nós. Donde se prova que esta humanidade é o maior erro que jamais Deus cometeu.
  • Human effort may manage at its best to transform a starving proletariat into a well-fed bourgeoisie; but then a worse proletariat emerges from the bowels of society. Jesus was right, there will always be the poor among us. Which proves that this humanity is the greatest error that God ever committed.
  • "O Natal" (Christmas), from José Maria Eça de Queiroz Cartas de Inglaterra (1879-82); translation from José Maria Eça de Queiroz (trans. Ann Stevens) Letters from England (London: Bodley Head, 1970) pp. 36-7.

• The pleasures of the mighty are obtained by the tears of the poor.
  • Samuel Richardson Clarissa (1747-48), Letter 43.

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