We have been living through a time of sorrow. Our seed remains seed. Our nostrils are dusty.

I always worried because whenever a drought struck, an accursed storm of blood always followed.

Someday men will learn to irrigate and spread fertilizer instead of praying for fertility.

The real cause of hunger is the powerlessness of the poor to gain access to the resources they need to feed themselves.

I am the poet of the poor, because I was poor when I loved; since I could not give gifts, I gave words.

Now I would solicit the particular attention of those numerous people who imagine that money is everything in this world, and that rank and ability are inseparable from wealth: let them observe that Cincinnatus, the one man in whom Rome reposed all her hope of survival, was at that moment working a little three-acre farm (now known as Quinctian meadows) west of the Tiber, just opposite the spot where the shipyards are today. A mission from the city found him at work on his land - digging a ditch, maybe, or ploughing. Greetings were exchanged, and he was asked - with a prayer for God's blessing on himself and his country - to put on his toga and hear the Senate's instructions. This naturally surprised him, and, asking if all were well, he told his wife Racilia to run to their cottage and fetch his toga. The toga was brought, and wiping the grimy sweat from his hands and face he put it on; at once the envoys from the city saluted him, with congratulations, as Dictator, invited him to enter Rome, and informed him of the terrible danger of Minucius's army.