Poverty makes you sad as well as wise.
Interpretation
Poverty brings both sorrow and insights into life.
This quote by Bertolt Brecht suggests that experiencing poverty can lead to feelings of sadness, yet it can also provide a unique perspective and wisdom about life and human nature. The dichotomy of suffering and understanding highlights how hardships can shape oneβs outlook and intelligence in profound ways.
In practice
This quote can be used in a charity event speech to highlight the importance of understanding 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.
Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth.
There's no difference between a pessimist who says, "Oh it's hopeless, so don't bother doing anything." and an optimist who says, "Don't bother doing anything, it's going to turn out fine anyways. Either way, nothing happens."
No one can ask honestly or hopefully to be delivered from temptation unless he has himself honestly and firmly determined to do the best he can to keep out of it.
My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; Iβm grateful for it the way Iβm grateful for the ocean.
The mid-day sun is too much for most eyes; one is dazzled even with its reflection. Be careful that too broad and high an aim does not paralyze your effort and clog your springs of action.
You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don't do too many things wrong.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.