Poor person

“ 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? ”

“ Poor among the poor, destitute among the destitute, beggar among the beggars! The poor man of a great and eternal poverty! The happy and rich poor man, who accepts poverty, who desires poverty, who weds himself to poverty, who chants of poverty! The beggar who gives alms! The naked man who covers the naked! The hungry man who feeds others, the miraculous and supernatural, who changes the men owning false riches into poor men, and poor men into those with real wealth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is no actual want, no threatening danger of it. Yet, the poor find a gruesome pleasure in dwelling in the midst of their horrors, and the roll of their organ of misery churns along on an endless chain. ”

“ But ye would be better if ye thought what misery your comfortable, indolent, indisposition to open a purse, or to read a little account, often inflicts upon the poor; if ye pictured to yourselves the backward start of hopeless disappointment of some poor woman whose husband comes home without his money—the starvation, the obliteration of so many hopes, and the weary sorrowful days of a whole family. ”

“ You who see your betters, bearing up under this shame every day, meekly suffering under the slights of fortune, gentle and unpitied, poor, and rather despised for their poverty, do you ever step down from your prosperity and wash the feet of these poor wearied beggars? ”

“ Tell me, is not poverty a kind of madness, an obsession that haunts you night and day? To puzzle, at every hour, how to meet this demand and how to shun that one; to deny yourself the necessities of life, and your friends those poor little pleasures that you are yearning to bestow upon them—is it not a mental malady, a fever ”

“ 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 ”

“ All the world that knows me is conscious of my poverty, but none but myself is aware how poor I really am. I have felt, and feel, that if I can only hold on, I shall win my way in my profession yet. But it is the holding on which is so difficult. ”

“ You who come into the world amid luxury and splendour, who have never been required to work for a single comfort, who have the means of gratifying expensive tastes, and who grudge no expenditure on the objects of your fancy:—was it meant that you were to sustain no relation of help and sympathy to the poor, especially your neighbors, your tenants, or your workpeople? ”

“ If any one of you will know whether he is really poor in spirit, let him consider whether he loves the ordinary consequences and effects of poverty, which are hunger, thirst, cold, fatigue, and the denudation of all conveniences. ”

“ The poor feel for the poor, and spare even somewhat from their poverty. Their hearts can tell the pangs of poverty, and pity fills them with love and charity and regret that poverty makes them powerless. But still thou hast a voice. Raise it, and cry shame on those who may, yet will not save the nation from the stain of this deep indignity to woman! ”

“ The poor, they say, are rich in poor things, and this lad grew to manhood with a multitude of mean little vices and dirty ways which showed like a sign on his pale weak face, and summed up the trivial soul within for you at the first glance. ”

“ The fixity of their conviction that they cannot get away from poverty, their resignation to it, their firm belief that they can never rise into prosperity,—these are the most distressing things about the very poor. ”

“ Not poor with the arrogant poverty complained of by certain people who have five or six thousand a year to live upon, and who yet swear they can hardly manage to make both ends meet, but really poor,—downright, cruelly, hideously poor, with a poverty that is graceless, sordid and miserable? ”

“ It is so with the rich, doubtless, and it may be so with the poor who were born in this poverty; but to the well-born and well-educated, to the refined and intellectual, poverty is a dreadful, dreadful thing. ”

“ What is the condition of the poor? A dreary tossing on the bed of existence, a perpetual fear of consequences that perpetually distresses them. Lives of anxiety they lead, because they do not know what a dream the whole thing is. ”

“ But the endurance of the inequalities of life by the poor is the marvel of human society. ”

“ It is a kind of blindness—poverty. We can only grope through life when we are poor, hitting and maiming ourselves against every angle. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Out upon the folly which, in estimating human misery, allows aught to bear comparison with the agony of the poor! I use the word poor relatively; I call not those poor to whom honesty brings self-respect, whose habits and whose means have gone together, and whose industry is its own support. But those are the poor whose exertion supplies not their wants—to whom cold, hunger, and weariness, are common feelings; who have known better days—to whom the past furnishes contrast, and the future fear. ”

“ The poor might be made rich, the sick well, the sad merry, the loveless beloved—in one moment—if they could only know when that moment comes! But not once in a million million lifetimes do they hit upon it ”

“ If I quote these cases here it is not to hinder the flow of the broad, pure stream of charity by one single obstacle, but to show such of my readers as may need the hint how dangerous and delusive it is to think that careless almsgiving is in any shape or form a real assistance to. the poor and suffering.
People who wish to do good must give their time as well as their money. They must personally investigate all those cases they wish to relieve, and they must set about seeing how the causes which lead to misery and suffering can be removed. ”

“ The meaning of that, in plain English, is, that we must find out how far poverty and riches are good or bad for people, and what is the difference between being miserably poor—so as, perhaps, to be driven to crime, or to pass life in suffering—and being blessedly poor, in the sense meant in the Sermon on the Mount. ”

“ So that poverty is, except where there is an actual want of food and raiment, a thing much more imaginary than real. The shame of poverty, the shame of being thought poor, is a great and fatal weakness, though arising, in this country, from the fashion of the times themselves. ”

“ I ask you, what am I? I'm one of the undeserving poor: that's what I am. Think of what that means to a man. ”

“ The hearts of the rich are hardened. The existence of the poor is a reproach to them." ”

“ The poor gentleman suffers mentally, and while the beggar who lives on casual charity has an occasional luxury in a full meal, he, whose poverty must be hidden but cannot be unknown, is labouring under an [145] unremitting and incessant pressure; and it is this that wastes away the body to a mere shadow and bows down the spirit to the earth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That the poor have strange, one might almost say occult, powers, seems to me proved. The downtrodden with whom I dealt were, so far as I could judge, the very pies and daws of existence, who, one might reasonably suppose, would be grateful for whatever hips and haws and other chance berries the bleak winter of their calamities left them. ”

“ As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ POVERTY AND DEATH
"How little can the rich man know Of what the poor man feels, When Want, like some dark demon foe, Nearer and nearer steals! "HE never tramp'd the weary round, A stroke of work to gain, And sicken'd at the dreaded sound Which tells he seeks in vain. "Foot-sore, heart-sore, HE never came Back through the winter's wind, To a dank cellar, there no flame, No light, no food, to find. ”

“ Do not tell of the poverty of your parents, or the hardships of your early life; to do any of these things is to mentally class yourself with the poor for the time being, and it will certainly check the movement of things in your direction. ”

“ Every thing was done that could be devised to make the poor people I had to deal with comfortable and happy in their new situation; and my hopes, that a habit of enjoying the real comforts and conveniences which were provided for them, would in time, soften their hearts;—open their eyes;—and render them grateful and docile, were not disappointed. ”

“ to wit, that the greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty, and that our first duty—a duty to which every other consideration should be sacrificed—is not to be poor. ”

“ Play, luxury, and debauch have ruined innumerable families, but alms have impoverished none .
3. Men, at the day of judgment, shall be accountable for their alms ; but what answer can the unfeeling rich ones make when the poor shall accuse them ? when Jesus Christ himself shall reproach them with their insensibility ? “ Go, ye cursed, into eternal fire. I was hungry, and you gave me not to eat ; I was naked , and you did not clothe me," & c . A heart that is hard to the poor is the heart of a reprobate; but , on the contrary, a soul that is truly charitable is a soul acceptable. ”

“ 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? ”

“ The poor are by no means the least 'rich towards God.' At any rate, if poverty sometimes hardens, wealth, especially sudden wealth, can harden too, causing arrogance, boastfulness, and the bullying temper. ”

“ Such occasions are "red-letter days" in the homes of people of limited means; and pathos is never more delicately suggested than when the poor man forgets his poverty in the wealth of a home-gathering and a feast of remembrance. "Let not a stranger intermeddle with their joy." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Although living in a state of the most abject poverty, deprived of most of [311] the absolute necessaries of life, and frequently enduring the pangs of protracted starvation, yet these poor people appear happy and contented. ”