A dictionary of Proverbs (Oxford Paperback Reference)

It is BETTER to be born lucky than rich

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  1639 J. CLARKE Paramiologia Anglo-Latina 49 Better to have good fortune then be a rich mans child. 1784 New Foundling Hospital for Wit (new ed.) IV. 128 Estate and 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; riches
  

BETTER to die on your feet than live on your knees
Cf. 1936 D. IBARRURI speech 3 Sept Il vaut mieux mourir debout que de vivre a genoux! The saying is also attributed to the Mexican revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata (1879­1919).
□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. ■ courage