from rags to riches

Idioms  

1. From being poor to being wealthy, especially through one's own efforts. For example, The invention catapulted the scientist from rags to riches. Horatio Alger (1834–1899) popularized this theme in some 130 best-selling novels, in which the hero, through hard work and thrift, pulled himself out of poverty to wealth and happiness.

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Example Sentences

The 1979 story of a young woman's journey from rags to riches went from bestseller to super-seller in a year and stayed on the New York Times list for 43 weeks.

From BBC • Nov. 25, 2024

California tends to go from rags to riches, bounty to poverty when it comes to rain, Maue said.

From Seattle Times • Mar. 2, 2023

The customers inevitably choose the most decrepit structure, which the Gaineses transform from rags to riches.

From Washington Post • Dec. 5, 2019

Reba McEntire’s version of “Fancy,” Gentry’s sizzling tale of a woman’s journey from rags to riches, cracked the Top 10 on Billboard’s country charts in 1991.

From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 12, 2018

The nineteenth-century economic creed had taught that hard work unlocked the door which led from rags to riches.

From The Black Experience in America by Coombs, Norman