Tirukural

CHAPTER 105

Poverty

1041

Ask what is more miserable than being poor, and the answer comes—only poverty pains like poverty.§

1042

Poverty, the cruelest of demons, deprives a man of every joy in this life, then takes them from the next life.§

1043

Craving, another name for poverty, will obliterate at once ancestral honor and dignity of speech.§

1044

Privation produces unmindfulness, which gives birth to improper words, even in men of proper birth.§

1045

Poverty is that single sorrow which gives rise to a multitude of miseries.§

1046

Even when the poor perceive profoundly and speak skillfully, their most meaningful words are always forgotten.§

1047

He who is impoverished and estranged from virtue will be regarded as a stranger even by his own mother.§

1048

Will the wretched poverty that nearly killed me yesterday come again today?§

1049

Men may slumber even in the midst of fire, but none can find repose in the midst of poverty.§

1050

Lacking a morsel of food, a man may either slay every desire or kill off his neighbor’s salt and rice broth.§