Do not ask the name of the person who seeks a bed for the night.
He who is reluctant to give his name is the one who most needs shelter.
It is the great privilege of poverty to be happy and yet unenvied,
to be healthy with physic, secure without a guard, and to obtain
from the bounty of nature what the great and wealthy are compelled
to procure by the help of art.
The Poor Man whom everyone speaks of, the Poor Man whom everyone
pities, one of the repulsive Poor from whom ''charitable'' souls keep
their distance, he has still said nothing. Or, rather, he has spoken
through the voice of Victor Hugo, Zola, Richepin. At least, they said so.
And these shameful impostures fed their authors. Cruel irony, the Poor
Man tormented with hunger feeds those who plead his case.
We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects
to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not
join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem
him spiritless and lacking in ambition.
Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great
enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some
virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.
To be shelterless and alone in the open country, hearing the wind moan and
watching for day through the whole long weary night; to listen to the falling
rain, and crouch for warmth beneath the lee of some old barn or rick, or
in the hollow of a tree; are dismal things -- but not so dismal as
the wandering up and down where shelter is, and beds and sleepers are by
thousands; a houseless rejected creature.
Victor Hugo
Samuel Johnson
Albert Campus
William James
Samuel Johnson
Charles Dickens
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