April 10, 2008

some thoughts about poverty
photo by David Keller
(trip to Peru)

"Empty pockets never held anyone back.
Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that."
- Norman Vincent Peale

"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

"We think sometimes that poverty is only being
hungry, naked and homeless.
The poverty of being unwanted,
unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty.
We must start in our own homes
to remedy this kind of poverty."
- Mother Teresa

"It is poverty to decide that a child must die
so that you may live as you wish."
- Mother Teresa

"No man can tell whether he is rich or poor
by turning to his ledger.
It is the heart that makes a man rich.
He is rich or poor according to what he is,
not according to what he has."
- Henry Ward Beecher