# Quote — George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

> For, when you are approaching poverty, you make one discovery which outweighs some of the others. You discover boredom and mean complications and the beginnings of hunger, but you also discover the great redeeming feature of poverty: the fact that it annihilates the future. Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry. When you have a hundred francs in the world you are liable to the most craven panics. When you have only three francs you are quite indifferent; for three francs will feed you till tomorrow, and you cannot think further than that. You are bored, but you are not afraid. You think vaguely, 'I shall be starving in a day or two--shocking, isn't it?' And then the mind wanders to other topics. A bread and margarine diet does, to some extent, provide its own anodyne. And there is another feeling that is a great consolation in poverty. I believe everyone who has been hard up has experienced it. It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs--and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety.

- Author: [George Orwell](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell.md)
- Book: [Down and Out in Paris and London](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Orwell#Down_and_Out_in_Paris_and_London_(1933)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/for-when-you

## More from this book

> He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him), and took a sort of pleasure in thinking that human affairs would never improve. Sometimes, he said, when sleeping on the Embankment, it had consoled him to look up at Mars or Jupiter and think that there were probably Embankment sleepers there. He had a curious theory about this. Life on earth, he said, is harsh because the planet is poor in the necessities of existence. Mars, with its cold climate and scanty water, must be far poorer, and life correspondingly harsher. Whereas on earth you are merely imprisoned for stealing sixpence, on Mars you are probably boiled alive. This thought cheered Bozo, I do not know why. He was a very exceptional man.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/he-was-an-embittered.md)

> I only realized during my last week that I was being cheated, and, as I could prove nothing, only twenty-five francs were refunded. The doorkeeper played similar tricks on any employee who was fool enough to be taken in. He called himself a Greek, but in reality he was an Armenian. After knowing him I saw the force of the proverb "Trust a snake before a Jew and a Jew before a Greek, but don't trust an Armenian."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/i-only-realized.md)

> It is fatal to look hungry. It makes people want to kick you.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/down-and-out-in-paris-and-london/it-is-fatal.md)