Poverty makes a crime of every indulgence. - George Gissing

Refuge from despair is often found in the passion of self-pity and that spirit of obstinate resistance which it engenders.

I seem anything but lovable. I don't underrate my powers — rather the opposite, no doubt; but what I always seem to lack is the gift of pleasing — moral grace. My strongest emotions seem to be absorbed in revolt; for once that I feel tenderly, I have a hundred fierce, resentful, tempestuous moods. To be suave and smiling in common intercourse costs me an effort.

Yes; they can take everything. How foolish of Stephen Candy and his tribe not to be born of the class of landlords! The inconvenience of having no foothold on the earth’s surface is so manifest.