Poor man

“ Nor was it even a case of folly: a poor man who had helped them in their trouble, hardly could they have done otherwise without proving themselves ungrateful. And so on, a tedious tale, commonplace, trivial. Now listless, patient, hard working, they had arrived at an animal-like indifference to their fate, content so long as they could obtain the bare necessities of existence, passive when these were not forthcoming, their interest in life limited to the one luxury of the poor—an occasional glass of beer or spirits. ”

“ Money, or a faithful and modest friend....
"What hinders a man, who has clearly comprehended these things, from living with a light heart, and bearing easily the reins, quietly expecting everything which can happen, and enduring that which has already happened? Would you have me to bear poverty? Come, and you will know what poverty is when it has found one who can act well the part of a poor man." ”

“ Men took the moody clerk for a madman; his bitter poverty quickened the defiant pride that made him loth, as he tells us, to bow to the gay lords and dames who rode decked in silver and minivere along the Cheap or to exchange a "God save you" with the law sergeants as he passed their new house in the Temple. His world is the world of the poor; he dwells on the poor man's life, on his hunger and toil, his rough revelry and his despair, with the narrow intensity of a man who has no outlook beyond it. ”

“ Your curiosity is natural. I am not a poor man—in fact I should be called rich. Poverty and pecuniary troubles, therefore, have nothing to do with my strange act—as the world considers it. In my life there have been two tragedies. ”

“ The motto of the worker is, "I owe the world a life," and the motto of the parasite is, "The world owes me a living." When the parasite happens to be poor we call him a pauper; but there is a world of difference between poverty and pauperism. The poor man may become destitute through stress of circumstances, and be forced to accept charity, but your true pauper, be he rich or poor, has the parasitic habit of mind. ”

“ Not so the poor man: his poverty is a shoe that pinches every hour of the twenty-four; he may bear up from habit, from philosophy, against his restricted means of enjoyment; he may accustom himself to limited and narrow bounds of pleasure ”

“ It is all very well to smile at the simplicity of the fool, and admire the cunning of the knave, but let us remember that the poor fool has in each generation to discover for himself that this is a world in which skimmed milk is constantly masquerading as cream, and that faith in the honesty of human nature in business affairs is in the poor man the first step on the road to ruin. ”

“ But seems it such rubbish to the poor man, to whom it promises a paradise on the easy terms of upsetting a world? For ye see, these "Appeals to Operatives" represent that same world-upsetting as the simplest thing imaginable—a sort of two-and-two-make-four proposition. The poor have only got to set their strong hands to the axle, and heave-a-hoy! ”

“ I said, very calmly. "If so, I will wish you good-day."
"M. Maxime!" she cried, rushing forward to stop me, "forgive me! have pity on me! Alas! I am so unhappy. Imagine what must be the thoughts of a poor creature like me, who has been given—cruelly—a heart, a soul, a brain ... and who can only use them to suffer ... and to hate! What is my life? What is my future? My life is the perception of my poverty, ceaselessly aggravated by the luxury which surrounds me! My future will be to regret, some day, to weep bitterly for even this life—this slave's life, odious as it is! ”

“ And this genial pleasure in spending helps the poor man in his misery; consoles him for his destitution; offers him who is homeless a spot where he may feel comfortable, and teaches him to forget all that oppresses him. ”

“ There was a feeling of confidence that all things necessary for health, comfort, and usefulness, would still be given, if sought for in a right spirit. Poverty, Mr. Townsend, is no curse, nor is wealth a blessing, abstractly considered. [Pg 17] They bless or curse according to the effect they produce upon our minds. The happiest man I ever saw, was a poor man, so far as this world’s goods were concerned. ”

“ So I have sat down to write an account of this decisive day of my life, endeavouring to preserve exactly the phraseology of the old notary, a mixture of stiffness and courtesy, of mistrust and kind feeling, which more than once made me smile, though my heart was bleeding.
I am face to face with poverty. Not the haughty, hidden, and poetic poverty that among forests and deserts and savannas fired my imagination, but actual misery, need, dependence, humiliation, and something worse even—the poverty of the rich man who has fallen; poverty in a decent coat ”

“ And let me linger in this place, for an instant, to remark that if ever household affections and loves are graceful things, they are graceful in the poor. The ties that bind the wealthy and the proud to home may be forged on earth, but those which link the poor man to his humble hearth are of the truer metal and bear the stamp of Heaven. ”

“ And the poor man, who considered that failure to pay one's obligation was the greatest of all dishonours, returned to his work, growing ever weaker and thinner, and feeling within himself the gradual sagging of his vitality. ”

“ Instead, therefore, of applauding “happy poverty,” which applause is so much the fashion of the present day, I despise the man that is poor and contented; for, such content is a certain proof of a base disposition, a disposition which is the enemy of all industry, all exertion, all love of independence. ”

“ Under such circumstances, what marvel that the poor man becomes unthrifty, reckless and desperate? I know how common it is to complain of the extravagance of the poof. Often there is reason for the complaint. It is a wrong thing, and immoral, for. a man with a dependent family to spend all his earnings, if it be possible to live with less. ”

“ Whether our readers have noticed these men, in their walks, as often as we have, we know not; this we know—that the miserably poor man (no matter whether he owes his distresses to his own conduct, or that of others) who feels his poverty and vainly strives to conceal it, is one of the most pitiable objects in human nature. Such objects, with few exceptions, are shabby-genteel people. ”

“ And he ought to know something of the emotions of a poor man, not by being poor, but simply by being a man. Therefore, in any writer who is describing poverty, my first objection to him will be that he has studied his subject. ”

“ He pays, indeed, says I, too much for his whistle.
If I knew a miser, who gave up every kind of comfortable living, all the pleasure of doing good to others, all the esteem of his fellow- citizens, and the joys of benevolent friendship, for the sake of accumulating wealth: Poor man, says I, you do indeed pay too much for your whistle.
When I meet a man of pleasure, sacrificing every laudable improvement of the mind, or of his fortune to mere corporeal sensations ; Mistaken man, says I, you are providing pain for yourself instead of pleasure ; you give too much for your whistle. ”

“ But I am sure that the poor man's dignity and freedom, his self-respect and energy, depend upon his cordial knowledge that his poverty is a true region and kind of life, with its own chances of character, its own springs of happiness and revelations of God. ”

“ Those who know by experience the miseries of poverty should be compassionate to those who suffer the like, but they are inexcusably barbarous if they be injurious to them. 2. How imperious and griping those commonly are who, being indigent and necessitous, get into power. If a prince prefer a poor man, he forgets that ever he was poor, and none shall be so oppressive to the poor as he, nor squeeze them so cruelly. The hungry leech and the dry sponge suck most. Set a beggar on horseback, and he will ride without mercy. ”

“ The poor man is not merely a slave who treads the wheel, and had a handful of meal shoved down his gullet now and again to keep him from starving to death. He is on the point of discovering that he performs a higher service, look you! ”

“ Poverty, bitter though it be, has no sharper sting than this,--that it makes men ridiculous. Who was ever allowed at Borne to become a son-in-law, if his estate was inferior? What poor man's name appears in any will? ”

“ There are who are so pitiful over the poor man, that, finding they cannot lift him beyond the reach of the providence which intends there shall always be the poor on the earth, will do for him nothing at all.
“Where is the use?” they say. They treat their money like their children, and would not send it into a sad house. If they had themselves no joys but their permanent ones, where would the hearts of them be? ”

“ If the rights of the poor of all classes were universally acknowledged, if intellectual and moral education were what they should be, the deaf would hear, and the blind would see; and the rich man would no longer look with fear upon, the poor man, nor the poor man with envy on the rich. ”

“ Seven years had not passed over without those precious accumulations to Aikin that constitute the poor man's wealth; for, save a conscience void of offence, there is no treasure comparable to healthy, bright, well-trained children. ”

“ The companion picture, "The Triumph of Poverty," had also a Latin motto, to the effect that, while the rich man is ever anxious, "the poor man fears nothing, joyous hope is his portion, and he learns to serve God by the practice of virtue." In the picture a lean and hungry-looking old woman, Poverty, was seen riding in the lowliest of vehicles, a cart, drawn by two donkeys, Stupidity and Clumsiness, and by two oxen, Negligence and Indolence. Beside her in the cart sits Misfortune. A meagre and forlorn crowd surround and follow them. ”

“ I mean the man, who, when the distant poor
Need help, denies them nothing but his name.
But poverty, with most who whimper forth
Their long complaints, is self-inflicted woe; 430
Th' effect of laziness or sottish waste. ”

“ To express it in terms of a theory which in one form or another is accepted by nearly all thinkers—the poor have not only the Will to Live, they have the Courage to Live.
THE COURAGE TO LIVE
On the whole, they possess the Courage to Live much more than any other class. And they need it much more. The industrious middle-class man, the commercial or professional man, works with a reasonable expectation of ending his days in comfort. He would hardly work without. But the poor man's reasonable expectation is the workhouse, or some almost equally galling kind of dependency. ”

“ The condition of the poor in general was most painful to witness the privations they endured were incredible. On entering the house of a poor man, a few days since, he found that all that the family had to sit upon was a stone. ”

“ Meantime I am the only sufferer by my poverty, and am not poor, for no man is so who lives upon his income. Comprends-tu? My dear friend, I have told you what I have told no other person in the world. ”

“ The poor man frightened, terrified, alarmed, seized with a feeling of horripilation all over the body, and agitated in mind, reflects thus: Unexpectedly have I here fallen in with a king or grandee. People like me have nothing to do here; let me go; in the street of the poor I am likely to find food and clothing without much difficulty. ”

“ The poor man looks about him at every step he takes, listens suspiciously to every word he hears from the people he meets, every step he takes affords in this way a task for his thoughts and feelings--an occupation. ”

“ Why there’s one poor man I know, that lives in a neighbourhood of poor men, down our way, and he’s right industrious, but he can’t get rich and he never ken, cause all these other poor men live on him. ”

“ Let it be understood, however, that, by poverty, I mean real want, a real insufficiency of the food and raiment and lodging necessary to health and decency; and not that imaginary poverty, of which some persons complain. The man who, by his own and his family’s labour, can provide a sufficiency of food and raiment, and a comfortable dwelling-place, is not a poor man. There must be different ranks and degrees in every civil society, and, indeed, so it is even amongst the savage tribes. ”

“ It is easy enough to say that poverty is no crime. No; if it were men wouldn't be ashamed of it. It's a blunder, though, and is punished as such. A poor man is despised the whole world over; ”

“ Is he not poor with the poverty of the poorest, and lonely with the desolation of the outcast? So long as some must be cold and hungry and wretched, are there not tears in all his joy, and thorns in all his luxury? ”

“ "The rich man dines, while the poor man pines, And eats his heart away; 'They teach us lies,' he sternly cries, 'Would BROTHERS do as they?'" --The Dream. ”

“ It is on that broad ground I venture to ask those who by these scant sketches of a great evil have become in some slight way acquainted with it, to raise their voices and give strength to the cry which is going up at last for a rigid and searching inquiry into the conditions under which the Poor of this vast city live.
To leave the world a little better than he found it is the best aim a man can have in life, and no labour earns so sweet and so lasting a reward as that which has for its object the happiness of others. ”

“ He is able to make mistakes in his own evolution.
(3) The typical poor man is better adapted to his environment, such as it is, than the typical man of any other class; for he has been kept in closer contact with the primary realities—birth, death, risk, starvation;—in closer contact, that is to say, with those sections of human environment which are not of human making and which are common to all classes. ”

“ The truth is that the poor have a great deal of self-restraint, quite as much probably as their law-makers; but it is exercised in different directions and, possibly, is somewhat frittered away in small occasions. The poor man has so much more bark than bite. ”