quotations about hunger
Hungry bellies have no ears.
FRANCOIS RABELAIS
Pantagruel
They said they were an-hungry; sigh'd forth proverbs,
That hunger broke stone walls, that dogs must eat,
That meat was made for mouths, that the gods sent not
Corn for the rich men only: with these shreds
They vented their complainings.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Coriolanus
A man with money to pay for a meal can talk about hunger without demeaning himself.... But for a man with no money hunger is a disgrace.
VICKI BAUM
Martin's Summer
I have never known what it means to be hungry. I don't mean by this statement that I was raised by a well-to-do family--I have no such banal intent. I mean that I have had not the remotest idea of the nature of the sensation of "hunger." It sounds peculiar to say it, but I have never been aware that my stomach was empty. When as a boy I returned home from school the people at home would make a great fuss over me. "You must be hungry. We remember what it's like, how terribly hungry you feel by the time you get home from school. How about some jelly beans? There's cake and biscuits too." Seeking to please, as I invariably did, I would mumble that I was hungry, and stuff a dozen jelly beans in my mouth, but what they meant by feeling hungry completely escaped me.
OSAMU DAZAI
No Longer Human
No more fear of hunger. A new kind of freedom. But what then ... what? What would my life be like on a daily basis? Most of it has been consumed with the acquisition of food. Take that away and I'm not really sure who I am, what my identity is. The idea scares me some.
SUZANNE COLLINS
The Hunger Games
A hungry man praises every dish.
MEXICAN PROVERB
Hunger of choice is a painful luxury; hunger of necessity is terrifying torture.
MIKE MULLIN
Ashfall
Everybody's got a hunger, a hunger they can't resist;
There's so much that you want, you deserve much more than this.
But if dreams came true, oh, wouldn't that be nice?
But this ain't no dream we're living through tonight.
Girl, you want it, you take it, you pay the price.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
"Prove It All Night", Darkness on the Edge of Town
The signal for hunger is much, much harder to turn off. We are omnivores with an oversized brain that requires a lot of energy. We are not specialized in how we get our food. Instead, we are always willing, always alert, always ready with a rock or digging stick. We are happy to snack all day long. We are particularly drawn to the high-caloric bit of fat around the deer's kidney and the sweet taste of berries. Our love of fat and sugar has been associated with the same chemical responses that underlie our addictions to alcohol and drugs; this cycle of addiction may have developed to encourage eating behavior. We hunger easily, we find food, we get a chemical reward. Then we're hungry again. That's good, because the next time we look for food, we may not find it. Better keep eating while you can.
SHARMAN APT RUSSELL
Hunger: An Unnatural History
A hungry man is not a free man.
ADLAI STEVENSON
speech, Sept. 6, 1952
It is fatal to look hungry. It makes people want to kick you.
GEORGE ORWELL
Down and Out in Paris and London
A hungry people listens not to reason, nor cares for justice, nor is bent by any prayers.
SENECA THE YOUNGER
De Brevitate Vitae
Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere. Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing that hung upon poles and lines; Hunger was patched into them with straw and rag and wood and paper; Hunger was repeated in every fragment of the small modicum of firewood that the man sawed off; Hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys, and stared up from the filthy street that had no offal, among its refuse, of anything to eat. Hunger was the inscription on the baker's shelves, written in every small loaf of his scanty stock of bad bread; at the sausage-shop, in every dead-dog preparation that was offered for sale. Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts in the turned cylinder; Hunger was shred into atomics in every farthing porringer of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil.
CHARLES DICKENS
A Tale of Two Cities
We know that a peaceful world cannot exist one-third rich and two-thirds hungry.
JIMMY CARTER
Long Beach Independent, May 23, 1977
Hunger drives the wolf from the wood.
FRENCH PROVERB
Hunger knows no friend but its feeder.
ARISTOPHANES
The Wasps
I suspect that hunger was my mother.
PLAUTUS
Stichus
Hunger is the best seasoning.
SWEDISH PROVERB
Hunger and cold surrender a man to his enemy.
PORTUGUESE PROVERB
Letting food rot while people die of hunger. It's evil.
MARGARET PETERSON HADDIX
Among the Enemy