Famine

(247 votes)   There was no corn -- in the wide market-place all loathliest things, even human flesh, was sold; They weighed it in small scales -- and many a face was fixed in eager horror then; his gold the miser brought; the tender maid, grown bold through hunger, bared her scorned charms in vain.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
1792-1822, British Poet

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(147 votes)   When the Somalians were merely another hungry third world people, we sent them guns. Now that they are falling down dead from starvation, we send them troops. Some may see in this a tidy metaphor for the entire relationship between north and south. But it would make a whole lot more sense nutritionally -- as well as providing infinitely more vivid viewing -- if the Somalians could be persuaded to eat the troops.

Barbara Ehrenreich
1941-, American Author, Columnist

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(101 votes)   I will venture to affirm, that the three seasons wherein our corn has miscarried did no more contribute to our present misery, than one spoonful of water thrown upon a rat already drowned would contribute to his death; and that the present plentiful harvest, although it should be followed by a dozen ensuing, would no more restore us, than it would the rat aforesaid to put him near the fire, which might indeed warm his fur-coat, but never bring him back to life.

Jonathan Swift
1667-1745, Anglo-Irish Satirist

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(101 votes)   There are flood and drought over the eyes and in the mouth, dead water and dead sand contending for the upper hand. The parched eviscerate soil gapes at the vanity of toil, laughs without mirth. This is the death of the earth.

T. S. Eliot
1888-1965, American-born British Poet, Critic

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(76 votes)   Half-starved spiders prey'd on half-starved flies.

Charles Churchill
1731-1764, British Poet, Satirist

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