Workhouses Quotes

• If they would rather die, . . . they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.

  Charles Dickens

  Population, Scrooge, Christmas Carol

  Charles Dickens (1858). “A Christmas Carol”, p.9

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• People reared in workhouses, as you are aware, are no great acquisition to the community and they have no ideas whatsoever of civic responsibilities. As a rule their highest aim is to live at the expense of the ratepayers. Consequently, it would be a decided gain if they all took it into their heads to emigrate. When they go abroad they are thrown on their own responsibilities and have to work whether they like it or not.

  W. T. Cosgrave

  Responsibility, Ideas, People

  20 Copy quote

• I won't claim the workhouses didn't have their problems, but they were set up by people who cared.

  Edwina Currie

  People, Poverty, Problem

  11 Copy quote

• And what an example of the power of dress young Oliver Twist was! Wrapped in the blanket which had hitherto formed his only covering, he might have been the child of a nobleman or a beggar;—it would have been hard for the haughtiest stranger to have fixed his station in society. But now he was enveloped in the old calico robes, that had grown yellow in the same service; he was badged and ticketed, and fell into his place at once—a parish child—the orphan of a workhouse—the humble, half-starved drudge—to be cuffed and buffeted through the world, despised by all, and pitied by none.

  Charles Dickens

  Children, Humble, Yellow

  8 Copy quote

• It is not from the tall crowded workhouse of prosperity that men first or clearest see the eternal stars of heaven.

  Theodore Parker

  Stars, Men, Heaven

  8 Copy quote

• Four specters haunt the Poor - Old Age, Accident, Sickness and Unemployment. We are going to exorcise them. We are going to drive hunger from the hearth. We mean to banish the workhouse from the horizon of every workman in the land.

  David Lloyd George

  Heart, Mean, Land

  45 Copy quote

• During my incarceration Mother visited me. She had in some way managed to leave the workhouse and was making an effort to establish a home for us. Her presence was like a bouquet of flowers; she looked so fresh and lovely that I felt ashamed of my unkempt appearance and my shaved iodined head.'You must excuse his dirty face,' said the nurse.Mother laughed, and how well I remember her endearing words as she hugged and kissed me: 'With all thy dirt I love thee still.

  Charlie Chaplin

  Mother, Dirty, Flower

  12 Copy quote

• It was among farmers and potato diggers and old men in workhouses and beggars at my own door that I found what was beyond these and yet farther beyond that drawingroom poet of my childhood in the expression of love, and grief, and the pain of parting, that are the disclosure of the individual soul.

  Lady Gregory

  Pain, Grief, Men

  Lady Gregory (1919). “The Kiltartan Poetry Book”, p.16, Library of Alexandria

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• Please, sir, I want some more.

  Charles Dickens

  Want, Please

  Oliver Twist ch. 2 (1838)

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• Home is the girl's prison and the woman's workhouse.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Funny, Girl, Home

  Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: Women in the Home"

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• Lawyers enjoy a little mystery, you know. Why, if everybody came forward and told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth straight out, we should all retire to the workhouse.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Law, Littles, Mystery

  Dorothy L. Sayers (2013). “The Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries: Whose Body?, Clouds of Witness, and Unnatural Death”, p.317, Open Road Media

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• If I do not do sensible things about investments I shall spend my old age in a workhouse, where nobody will understand my jokes.

  Rebecca West

  Age, Investment, Sensible

  Rebecca West (2010). “The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews”, p.27, Open Road Media

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• How sublime to look down on the workhouse of nature, to see her clouds, hail, snow, rain, thunder, all fabricated at our feet!

  Thomas Jefferson

  Nature, Rain, Feet

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs, 2: Correspondence and Private Papers”, p.49

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• Everyone in the Chinese economic world knows that the country is not going to move out of cheap-workhouse status, toward the realm of 'real' rich-country corporate power and prosperity, unless (among other changes) it begins removing these price distortions.

  James Fallows

  Country, Real, Moving

  4 Copy quote