Begging

Begging (or, in old-fashioned terms, beggary) is to entreat earnestly, implore, or supplicate. It often occurs for the purpose of securing a material benefit, generally for a gift, donation or charitable donation. When done in the context of a public place, it is known as "panhandling", perhaps because the hand and arm are extended like the handle of a cooking implement, and not infrequently, a kitchen implement such as a pot or cup may be used.

Sourced

• Beggars must be no choosers.
  • Beaumont and Fletcher, The Scornful Lady (c. 1613; printed 1616), Act V, scene 3.

• Homer himself must beg if he want means, and as by report sometimes he did "go from door to door and sing ballads, with a company of boys about him."
  • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I, Section II. Mem. 4. Subsect. 6.

• Set a beggar on horseback, and he will ride a gallop.
  • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part II, Section III. Memb. 2.

• Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn.
  • Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605-1615), Part III, Section VII
  • Idiomatic. Literal translation: "Who would beg for benison if they might obtain venison of their own labour".

• Borgen ist nicht viel besser als betteln.
  • Borrowing is not much better than begging.
  • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Nathan der Weise (1779), II. 9.

• Der wahre Bettler ist
  Doch einzig und allein der wahre König.
  • The real beggar is indeed the true and only king.
  • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Nathan der Weise (1779), II. 9.

• Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks.
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act II, scene 2, line 281.

• Unless the old adage must be verified,
  That beggars mounted, run their horse to death.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part III (c. 1591), Act I, scene 4, line 126.

• Well, whiles I am a beggar I will rail
  And say, there is no sin but to be rich;
  And being rich, my virtue then shall be
  To say, there is no vice but beggary.
  • William Shakespeare, King John (1598), Act II, scene 1, line 593.

• I see, Sir, you are liberal in offers:
  You taught me first to beg; and now, methinks,
  You teach me how a beggar should be answer'd.
  • William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act IV, scene 1, line 437.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 64-65.

• I'd just as soon be a beggar as king,
  And the reason I'll tell you for why;
  A king cannot swagger, nor drink like a beggar,
  Nor be half so happy as I.
  * * * * *
  Let the back and side go bare.
  • Old English Folk Song. In Cecil Sharpe's Folk Songs from Somerset.

• Set a beggar on horse backe, they saie, and hee will neuer alight.
  • Robert Greene, Card of Fancie. Heywood—Dialogue. Claudianus—Eutropium. I. 181. Shakespeare—True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York, scene 3. Henry VI, IV. 1. Ben Jonson—Staple of News, Act IV. See also collection of same in Bebel—Proverbia Germanica, Suringar's ed. (1879). No. 537.

• To get thine ends, lay bashfulnesse aside;
  Who feares to aske, doth teach to be deny'd.
  • Robert Herrick, No Bashfulnesse in Begging.

• Mieux vaut goujat debout qu'empereur enterré.
  • Better a living beggar than a buried emperor.
  • Jean de La Fontaine, La Matrone d'Ephèse.

• A beggar through the world am I,
  From place to place I wander by.
  Fill up my pilgrim's scrip for me,
  For Christ's sweet sake and charity.
  • James Russell Lowell, The Beggar.

• A pampered menial drove me from the door.
  • Thomas Moss, The Beggar. (Altered by Goldsmith from "A Liveried Servant," etc.).

• Qui timide rogat,
  Docet negare.
  • He who begs timidly courts a refusal.
  • Seneca, Hippolytus, II. 593.