A child conscious of poverty will suffer snobbish agonies such as a grown-up person can scarcely even imagine.
 George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936). copy citation

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Author George Orwell
Source Keep the Aspidistra Flying
Topic poverty suffering
Date 1936
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200021.txt

Context

“Even at the third-rate schools to which Gordon was sent nearly all the boys were richer than himself. They soon found out his poverty, of course, and gave him hell because of it. Probably the greatest cruelty one can inflict on a child is to send it to school among children richer than itself. A child conscious of poverty will suffer snobbish agonies such as a grown-up person can scarcely even imagine. In those days, especially at his preparatory school, Gordon’s life had been one long conspiracy to keep his end up and pretend that his parents were richer than they were. Ah, the humiliations of those days!” source