Poverty

But we had somethin' in our house money can't buy
Kept us warm in the winter cool when the sun was high
For whenever we didn't have food enough
And the howling winds would get pretty rough
We patched the cracks and set the table with love.
~ Bill Anderson, Po' Folks (1962).

We have to recognise, that the gin-palace, like many other evils, although a poisonous, is still a natural outgrowth of our social conditions. The tap-room in many cases is the poor man's only parlour.
~ William Booth, In Darkest England and the Way Out (October 1890). Part I. -- The Darkness. Chapter VI. The Vicious

Know ye not that the poorest beggar ... is an earth-passengar also?
~ William Cowper Brann, in Brann the Iconoclast: A Collection of the Writings of W.C. Brann, Vol. II (1898). Going Forwards Backwards

I am willin' and anxious an' ready any day
To work for a decent livin', an' pay my honest way;
For I can earn my victuals, an' more too, I'll be bound,
If any body only is willin' to have me round.
~ William McKendree ("Will") Carleton, Over the Hill to the Poor House (1872).

Thank God for poverty
That makes and keeps us free,
That lets us go our unobtrusive way,
Glad of the sun and rain,
Upright, serene, humane,
Contented with the fortune of a day.
~ (William) Bliss Carman, from Pipes of Pan, Number Four (1904). Songs from a Northern Garden. The Word at St. Kavin's

[I]t's very nasty, being poor!
~ Willa Sibert Cather, My Mortal Enemy (1926). Part I. V

Poverty ... even in its extreme state, gives no man a right to view his rich neighbour with an evil eye, much less to do him mischief on account of his riches.
~ William Cobbett, Cobbett's Two-Penny Trash; Or Politics For The Poor (February 1831). To The Labourers Of England, On Their Duties And Their Rights

Thousands upon thousands are yearly brought into a state of real poverty by their great anxiety not to be thought poor.
~ William Cobbett, Advice to Young Men: And (Incidentally) to Young Women in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life Letter II: To A Young Man

Have you no touch of pity, that the poor
Stand starved at your inhospitable door?
Or if yourself, too scantily supplied,
Need help, let honest industry provide.
~ William Cowper, from Poems by William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1782). The Progress of Error

He found it inconvenient to be poor.
~ William Cowper, from Poems by William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1782). Charity

To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.
~ William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903). Of Our Spiritual Strivings

Destitution unrelieved is intolerable to a humane people. Where it has not been prevented, it must be relieved.
~ William Ellis, in the Westminster And Foreign Quarterly Review (April 1850). Relief Measures

[W]ar and drink are the two things man is never too poor to buy.
~ William Faulkner, A Fable (1954).

Eighty percent of children who grow up in a two-parent household never experience poverty during the first ten years of their lives. By contrast, only 27 percent of children living in single-parent households maintained the same high standard.
~ William Galston, The Responsive Community 14, 17 (1990). A Liberal-Democratic Case for the Two-Parent Family

Only eight percent of those who finished high school, got married before having a child, and waited until age 20 to have that child were living in poverty in 1992.
~ William Galston, Speech to the Institute for Family Values, Family Policy Symposium, New York (10 December 1993). Beyond the Murphy Brown Debate

For every talent that poverty has stimulated it has blighted a hundred.
~ John William Gardner

Oh God! give me poverty! shower upon me all the the imaginary hardships of human life! I will receive them all with thankfulness.
~ William Godwin, Things as They Are; or The Adventures of Caleb Williams, Volume 3 (1794). Chapter I

If every child can be trained to save, as well as given the knowledge and habits which assure his earning, much will be done toward saving the very poor from the temptations and sufferings of poverty.
~ William Torrey Harris, from Report of the Commissioner of Education for the Year 1892-1893 (1895).

Poverty is the test of civility and the touchstone of friendship.
~ William Hazlitt, Characteristics: in the Manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims (1823).

[P]overty is not the lack of things; it is the fear and the dread of want.
~ William Dean Howells, quoted in Poverty (1904). Chapter I

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.
~ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Lectures XIV and XV: The Value of Saintliness

We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant: the liberation of material attachments, the unbridled soul, the manlier indifference, the paying our way by what we are or do and not by what we have, the right to fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly -- the more athletic trim, in short, the moral fighting shape.
~ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Lectures XIV and XV: The Value of Saintliness

The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
~ Willem de Kooning

But what I learned from my experience in living in a community of almost all African-American people, and what I learned from my experience in living in my own community in Oklahoma before the relocation is that poor people have a much, much greater capacity for solving their own problems than most people give them credit for.
~ Wilma Mankiller, Speech at Sweet Briar College (2 April 1993). Rebuilding the Cherokee Nation

Poor man! I wish he had a warm house to live in; and kind friends to live with him: then he would not have to beg from door to door.
~ William Holmes McGuffey, The Eclectic First Reader: For Young Children (1836). Lesson 9: The Poor Old Man

The only bird that gives the poor a real tumble is the stork.
~ Wilson Mizner

[I]t is not revenge we want for poor people, but happiness; indeed, what revenge can be taken for all the thousands of years of the sufferings of the poor?
~ William Morris (Lecture delivered to the Hammersmith Branch of the Socialist Democratic Federation, on November 30th, 1884), in Commonweal (1887). How We Live and How We Might Live

[P]overty is showing up where we didn?t expect it -- among families that include two parents, a worker, and a head of the household with more than a high school education. These are the newly poor. These are the people our political and business class expects to climb out of poverty on an escalator moving downward.
~ Bill Moyers, Speech at the "Inequality Matters Forum," New York University (3 June 2004). The Fight of Our Lives

There's a kind of rethink that's going on right now at the Fund. We've got this goal of halving world poverty by 2015, which is a new war on poverty [by] the U.N., the World Bank, the IMF and other institutions. To do that ... the IMF and the World Bank have got to do a better job. This anti-globalization movement makes it seem like we have some kind of great, closed-door conspiracy, that the Bildenburgs of the world are taking over. It really doesn't happen that way.
~ William Murray, L.A. Weekly (16 November 2001). Back to Business -- A new war gives new urgency to the globalization debate

The road to poverty is paved with good intentions of those who wanted to save but never got around to it.
~ William Nickerson

[T]hat man is to be accounted poor, of whatever rank he be, and suffers the pain of poverty, whose expenses exceed his resources; and no man is, properly speaking, poor but he.
~ William Paley, Reasons For Contentment, Addressed To The Labouring Part Of The British Public (sermon given in 1790; published in 1793).

Fewness of people, is real poverty.
~ Sir William Petty, A Treatise of Taxes, and Contributions (1662).

Poverty, of course, is no disgrace, but it is damned annoying.
~ William Pitt

Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man's starving!
~ William Sydney Porter (O. Henry), The Heart of the West (1904). Cupid a La Carte

Ten men in our Country could buy the World, and ten million can't buy enough to eat.
~ Will Rogers, in Will Rogers' Weekly Articles: Volume 5, The Hoover Years, 1931-1933 (1982).

A king of shreds and patches.
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet. Act III, scene iv

Evermore thanks, the exchequer of the poor.
~ William Shakespeare, King Richard II. Act II, scene iii

[H]is poor self,
A dedicated beggar to the air,
With his disease of all-shunn'd poverty,
Walks, like contempt, alone.
~ William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens. Act IV, scene ii

Let me be recorded by the righteous gods,
I am as poor as you.
~ William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens. Act IV, scene ii

My poverty, but not my will consents.
~ William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar. Act V, scene i

O world! how apt the poor are to be proud.
~ William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night. Act III, scene i

Poverty is the best policy. If you get wealth, you will have to support other people; if you do not get wealth, it will be the duty of other people to support you.
~ William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883). Chapter I. 0n A New Philosophy: That Poverty Is The Best Policy

How to live well on nothing a year.
~ William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero (1848). Chapter XXXVI

Poverty is a bully if you are afraid of her, or truckle to her. Poverty is good-natured enough if you meet her like a man.
~ William Makepeace Thackeray, The Adventures of Philip, Volume II (1862). Chapter 3. Qu'on Est Bien a Vingt Ans

It would be nice if the poor were to get even half of the money that is spent in studying them.
~ William E. "Bill" Vaughan

[T]heir more lowly path have been allotted to them by the hand of God; ... it is their part faithfully to discharge its duties, and contentedly to bear its inconveniences.
~ William Wilberforce, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes of This Country, Contrasted With Real Christianity (1797). Chapter VI

[A] determined assault on poverty is not only compatible with conservatism, but should be one of its imperatives in an urban, industrialized society.
~ George F. Will, The Pursuit Of Happiness, And Other Sobering Thoughts (1978).

I was very poor at certain times. And I had two dogs, boxers. I didn't have any money for food, and there was the dog food ... so I ate it.
~ Andy Williams

To help the poor to a capacity for action and liberty is something essential for one's own health as well as theirs: there is a needful gift they have to offer which cannot be offered so long as they are confined by poverty.
~ Dr. Rowan Williams, Lecture at Building Bridges Seminar, Bosniak Institute, Sarajevo (18 May 2005). Christianity, Islam and the Challenge of Poverty

It's the anarchy of poverty
delights me, the old
yellow wooden house indented
among the new brick tenements.
~ William Carlos Williams, The Poor (1938)

[T]he poorest poor
Long for some moments in a weary life
When they can know and feel that they have been
Themselves the fathers and the dealers-out
Of some small blessings.
~ William Wordsworth, from Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, Vol. 2 (1800). The Old Cumberland Beggar