Quotes about poverty

In the affairs of this world, poverty alone is without envy.

At a certain depth of distress, the poor, in their stupor, groan no longer over evil, and are no longer thankful for good.

"It's so easy to make a person who hasn't got anything seem wrong." (chapter 4)

The beggar girl was still huddled up in the corner of the step. She looked frightful in her wet and dirty rags. She was staring straight before her with a stupid look of suffering, and Sara saw her suddenly draw the back of her roughened black hand across her eyes to rub away the tears which seemed to have surprised her by forcing their way from under her lids. She was muttering to herself.Sara opened the paper bag and took out one of the hot buns, which had already warmed her own cold hands a little."See," she said, putting the bun in the ragged lap, "this is nice and hot. Eat it, and you will not feel so hungry."The child started and stared up at her, as if such sudden, amazing good luck almost frightened her; then she snatched up the bun and began to cram it into her mouth with great wolfish bites."Oh, my! Oh, my!" Sara heard her say hoarsely, in wild delight. "Oh, my!"Sara took out three more buns and put them down.The sound in the hoarse, ravenous voice was awful."She is hungrier than I am," she said to herself. "She's starving." But her hand trembled when she put down the fourth bun. "I'm not starving," she said—and she put down the fifth.

Common suffering unites. But when suffering becomes intolerably acute, when it reduces people to abject, dehumanising poverty and insecurity, suffering disunites.

I am human, i am a human being, a soul, and not a piece of garbage, no matter how poor and ragged I look, and I deserve respect, he heard himself say, time and again as he descended to and repossessed his body."

"What I wonder," Bob Cole said in his strange tremulous voice, "is whether the people down here have to live this way so that we can live the way we do. We have to believe it's no, don't we? We couldn't face up to it otherwise. Because if most of the world lives in this kind of poverty so that we can have our goodies and our extra protein ration - what does that make us?"

Although we are all brothers, some die of hunger and of foodstuffs, clothing and shoes. And with so many naked and bare-while what is useful and necessary rots at the depots and warehouses

There’s only but two kinds of people. People can afford hotels like that, they’re one kind. We’re the other. Used to be, like, a middle class, people in between. But not anymore.

If all people had a decent job to occupy their minds, and regular meals to satisfy their hunger, most crimes would not be committed.

When hard times come to the party, dignity is one of the first guests to leave.

Cruelty walked the Warrens holding hands with poverty and rage.