Thomas Gray Quotes

Modesty is of no use to a beggar.

I was poor white trash, no glitter, no glamour, but I'm not ashamed of anything.

This only grant me, that my means may lie too low for envy, for contempt too high.

Those who are believed to be most abject and humble are usually most ambitious and envious.

I always tell people, 'I have more respect for somebody with no money and class than somebody who is trash and makes $1 billion.'

If Pride leads the Van, Beggary brings up the Rear.

I came from a background where I was very poor growing up but I have never known poverty. My parents worked hard and they went to bed hungry, but they fed us. Then my father became an ambassador, so I ended up being driven by chauffeurs. And then we became refugees. After that, I looked at it through this "glass" of to have and have not, and at the end of the day, who actually helps, who actually steps up, who is there for you.

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.

I'm not normally a jewelry person. I'm supposed to be a working class champion and all, and I don't like to rub my success in people's faces.

Pride in the case of a rich man is bad, but pride in the case of a poor man is worse.

What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.

Back then, we didn't know we were poor, and people were more proud then.

A slave has but one master. An ambition man, has as many as there are people who helped him get his fortune.

My parents were children during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and it scarred them. Especially my father, who saw destitution in his Brooklyn, New York neighborhood; adults standing in so called 'bread lines,' children begging in the streets.

Bottom line is, I didn't return to Apple to make a fortune. I've been very lucky in my life and already have one. When I was 25, my net worth was $100 million or so. I decided then that I wasn't going to let it ruin my life. There's no way you could ever spend it all, and I don't view wealth as something that validates my intelligence.

It is not poverty so much as pretense that harasses a ruined man - the struggle between a proud mind and an empty purse - the keeping up of a hollow show that must soon come to an end.

Without money honor is merely a disease.

I think that the poorest of the poor... look up to wealthy and successful Indians with some degree of respect and pride.

Nowadays nothing but money counts: a fortune brings honors, friendships; the poor man everywhere lies low.

'Great Expectations' has been described as 'Dickens's harshest indictment of society.' Which it is. After all, it's about money. About not having enough money; about the fever of the getting of money; about having too much money; about the taint of money.

I'm not the type to pat myself on the back and all that, but somebody has to be lucky, right? When I got to Dallas, I was struggling - sleeping on the floor with six guys in a three-bedroom apartment. I used to drive around, look at the big houses, and imagine what it would be like to live there and use that as motivation.

It would astonish if not amuse the older citizens to learn that I (a strange, friendless, uneducated, penniless boy, working at ten dollars per month) have been put down as the candidate of pride, wealth, and aristocratic family distinction.

Many exceedingly rich men are unhappy, but many middling circumstances are fortunate.

If we review the List of those Heroes who compose Congresses, Committees, mock Government, & the chief army Departments, we shall find it filled up with Men, desperate in Ambition or in Fortune.

Sociometric status is a powerful determinant of health.