Leah A. Zeldes

“Though it may take much suffering to kill the able-bodied and effective members of society, it does not take much to reduce them to worn, listless, diseased creatures, who thenceforward crawl through life with moody hearts and pain-stricken bodies.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton

“Poverty in a big city is more humiliating and deadening to all the joys of life than it can possibly be elsewhere.”
― Albert Bigelow Paine, The Bread Line A Story of a Paper

“Money isn’t everything.’‘The only people who say that are people who have enough money to pay the rent.”
― Janet Evanovich, Notorious Nineteen

“I am not wise enough to say how much of all this squalor and wretchedness and hunger is the fault of the people themselves, how much of it belongs to circumstances and environment, how much is the result of past errors of government, how much is race, how much is religion. I only know that children should never be hungry, that there are ignorant human creatures to be taught how to live; and if it is a hard task, the sooner it is begun the better, both for teachers and pupils. It is comparatively easy to form opinions and devise remedies, when one knows the absolute truth of things; but it is so difficult to find the truth here, or at least there are so many and such different truths to weigh in the balance....”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Penelope's Irish Experiences