Poverty makes you wise but it's a curse.
Interpretation
Poverty can teach valuable lessons about life, but it also brings significant hardships.
This quote by Bertolt Brecht suggests that experiencing poverty can lead to a deeper understanding of life and the human condition, fostering wisdom. However, it also highlights the negative aspects of poverty, portraying it as a curse that brings suffering and challenges, despite the potential for personal growth through adversity.
In practice
In a discussion about socioeconomic status, one might use the quote to emphasize the dual nature of poverty.
The shrill voices of those who give orders Are full of fear like the squeakings of Piglets awaiting the butcher's knife, as their fat arses Sweat with anxiety in their office chairs.... Fear rules not only those who are ruled, but The rulers too.
We need a type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses possible within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself.
We attacked a foreign people and treated them like rebels. As you know, it's all right to treat barbarians barbarically. It's the desire to be barbaric that makes governments call their enemies barbarians.
War is like love, it always finds a way.
Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.
Recently my fingers have developed a prejudice against comparatives. They all follow this pattern: a squirrel is smaller than a tree; a bird is more musical than a tree. Each of us is the strongest one in his or her own skin. Characteristics should take off their hats to one another, instead of spitting in each other's faces.
If I care to listen to every criticism, let alone act on them, then this shop may as well be closed for all other businesses. I have learned to do my best, and if the end result is good then I do not care for any criticism, but if the end result is not good, then even the praise of ten angels would not make the difference.
When you have peace in yourself and accept, then you are calm enough to do something, but if you are carried by despair, there is no hope.
He promises a lamp unto our feet, not a crystal ball into the future.
Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.
When I think something nice is going to happen I seem to fly right up on the wings of anticipation; and then the first thing I realize I drop down to earth with a thud. But really, Marilla, the flying part is glorious as long as it lasts. . . it's like soaring through a sunset. I think it almost pays for the thud.
None of us can avoid being contaminated by the world's evils; it's all a matter of what attitude you take towards them.
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