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Poverty is a soft pedal upon the branches of human activity, not excepting the spiritual.

— H. L. Mencken A Book of Prefaces (1917)

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Poverty

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

Smart Set (1910)

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

Prejudices, Third Series (1922)

The fact is that the average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth.

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We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.

Doris Lessing The Golden Notebook (1962)

It is better to be poor and walk in integrity than to be stupid and speak lies.

Solomon

If a poor person envies a rich person, he is no better than the rich person.

Leo Tolstoy

The poor, by thinking unceasingly of money, reach the point of losing the spiritual advantages of non-possession, thereby sinking as low as the rich.

Emil Cioran The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: H. L. Mencken (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.