Look at the poor lives which we lead. It is a wonder that we are so good as we are.

Poverty is often concealed in splendor, and often in extravagance. It is the task of many people to conceal their neediness from others. Consequently they support themselves by temporary means, and everyday is lost in contriving for tomorrow.

He who is not capable of enduring poverty is not capable of being free.

To a man with an empty stomach food is God.

When poverty comes in the door love flies out the window.

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.

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.

Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth.

To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.

A hungry man is not a free man.

For every talent that poverty has stimulated it has blighted a hundred.

Empty pockets make empty heads.

Poverty is like punishment for a crime you didn’t commit.

No man can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stomach.

Society comprises two classes: those who have more food than appetite, and those who have more appetite than food.

I am a poor man, but I have this consolation: I am poor by accident, not by design.

Painless poverty is better than embittered wealth.

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.

It is seldom that the miserable of the world can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.

Not he who has little, but he who wishes more, is poor.

The inevitable consequence of poverty is dependence.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

Here we all live in a state of ambitious poverty.

Hunger makes a thief of any man.

Poverty is the worst form of violence.

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.

That the poor are invisible is one of the most important things about them. They are not simply neglected and forgotten as in the old rhetoric of reform; what is much worse, they are not seen.

Poor men’s reasons are not heard.

It is life near the bone where it is sweetest.

I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life.