I will not feed your hunger with my blood
Nor crown your nakedness
With jewels of my elegant pain.
—Naomi Long Madgett (b. 1923)
One banquet in a rich family could feed a poor man’s family for half a year.
—Chinese proverb.
I am sure my bones would not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix with the earth of that country. I believe the thought would drive me mad on my death-bed could I suppose that any of my friends would be base enough to convey my carcass back to her soil. I would not even feed her worms if I could help it.
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)