honours!—mere caprich! Better be fortunate than rich: Since oft me find..Is verify’d what
proverbs prate. 1846 M. A. DENHAM Denham Tracts (1892) I. 224 Better to be born
lucky than rich. 1926 D. H. LAWRENCE in Harper’s Bazaar July 97 ‘Then what is luck,
mother?’ ‘It’s what causes you to have money. If you are lucky you have money. That’s
why it’s better to be born lucky than rich. If you’re rich you may lose your money. But if
you’re lucky, you will always get more money.’ 1980 T. MORGAN Somerset Maugham
XV. This was Maugham at his most lighthearted, exposing the fallacy of the moralist
position. ‘I’m glad to be able to tell you that it has a moral,’ he said, ‘and that is: it’s
better to be born lucky than to be born rich.’ luck; richesBETTER to die on your feet than live on your kneesCf. 1936 D. IBARRURI speech 3 Sept Il vaut mieux mourir debout que de vivre à genoux!
The saying is also attributed to the Mexican revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata (1879–
1919).
1941 Charleston Gazette 25 June 6/2 The president puts it in another way at
Cambridge when he says: ‘We would rather die on our feet that live on our knees’. 1955
Evening Standard (Uniontown, Pennsylvania) 18 Aug. 4/1 We face the fact that it
demoralizes concepts that have perennially ruled the minds of free men. ‘It is better to
die on one’s feet that live on one’s knees’ is no longer bravely proclaimed. In an atomic
war people neither die on their feet nor live on their knees. 1993 Washington Post 7
March (online) Better to die on your feet than live on your knees. Yeah. But what about
sitting around in a Designated Smoking Area? Is that living? 2007 Times Magazine 1
Sept. 90 Few sights induce such ambivalence in me as a bird in a cage. [They] may live
up to 15 years in captivity, as opposed to three or four in the wild, a classic quality versus
quantity dilemma.. Better to die on your feet, surely, or, er, talons, or wings, I suppose,
than live on your knees.. If owls have knees. courageIt is BETTER to give than to receiveThe AV form is also used (see quot. 2001): ACTS xx. 35 It is more blessed to give, than to
receive.
c 1390 GOWER Confessio Amantis v. 7725 Betre is to yive than to take. c 1527 T.
BERTHELET tr. Erasmus’ Sayings of Wise Men B2 It is better to gyue than to take, for he
that takethe a gyfte of another is bonde to quyte [repay] it, so that his lyberte is gone.
1710 S. PALMER Proverbs 351 ‘Tis better to Give than to Receive, but yet ‘tis Madness
to give so much Charity to Others, as to become the Subject of it our Selves. 1980 Times
(Christmas Supplement) 15 Nov. p. i. There is no harm in reminding your relatives and