POVERTY
Poverty is the greatest of physicians. His method is prophylactic rather than therapeutic, but in point of results he is in a class by himself.
His practice attests the efficacy of the ounce of prevention in big doses.
Poverty ranks high as a surgeon, too. Nobody else cuts out so many things that are not good for us.
In a way he has the respect of the profession. Where he is in charge of a case no other practitioner is apt to interfere.
We should not so much esteem our poverty as a misfortune, were it not that the world treats it so much as a crime.—Boree.
Not to be able to bear poverty is a shameful thing, but not to know how to chase it away by work is a more shameful thing yet.—Pericles.
Want is a bitter and a hateful good,
Because its virtues are not understood;
Yet many things, impossible to thought,
Have been by need to full perfection brought.
—Dryden.
Ned Shuter thus explained his reasons for preferring to wear stockings with holes to having them darned: "A hole," said he, "may be the accident of a day, and will pass upon the best gentleman, but a darn is premeditated poverty."