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Quote by Lucia Berlin

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A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

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Lucia Berlin

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“Is this a holy thing to see, In a rich and fruitful land, Babes reduced to misery, Feed with cold and usurous hand? Is that trembling cry a song? Can it be a song of joy? And so many children poor? It is a land of poverty! And their sun does never shine, And their fields are bleak & bare, And their ways are fill'd with thorns; It is eternal winter there. For where-e'er the sun does shine, And where-e'er the rain does fall, Babe can never hunger there, Nor poverty the mind appall.”

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Book:Songs of Experience
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“Profiteers were taking a hand and purveying at enormous prices essential foodstuffs not available in the shops. The result was that poor families were in great straits, while the rich went short of practically nothing. Thus, whereas plague by its impartial ministrations should have promoted equality among our townsfolk, it now had the opposite effect and, thanks to the habitual conflict of cupidities, exacerbated the sense of injustice rankling in men’s hearts. They were assured, of course, of the inerrable equality of death, but nobody wanted that kind of equality.”

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Book:The Plague
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“[We] believe, or assume to believe, that [we] satisfy [our] duty to [humanity] if [we] first provide fully for [our] own material wants and then pay [our] tribute to the universal provider by giving a little to the poor. But if [we] were scrupulously just there would be no poor to whom we could give alms and think that we had realized the merit of benevolence. Better than charity, better than giving of our surplus is conscientious and scrupulously fair conduct and a helping hand in need.”

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Author:Immanuel Kant
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“What we forget, if we ever knew, is that what we know now about status and wealth creation and sacrifice are predicated on who we are — that is, not poor. If you change the conditions of your not-poor status, you change everything you know as a result of being a not-poor. You have no idea what you would do if you were poor until you are poor. And not intermittently poor or formerly not-poor, but born poor, expected to be poor, and treated by bureaucracies, gatekeepers, and well-meaning respectability authorities as inherently poor. Then, and only then, will you understand the relative value of a ridiculous status symbol to someone who intuits that they cannot afford to not have it.”

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Book:Thick: And Other Essays
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“С малка торба и със няколко къшея човекът преживяше тъжната зима. Лежи незавит. А мястото - същото - студена скамейка и снежна градина. Той хляба в дланта си корава сковава по навик го гали и тайно въздиша. От болка по-жълт глухо изгревът пада. И падат със него премръзнали птици. И просякът, брат им, веднага споделя трохите на своята улична участ. Щастлив е в студената птича неделя, макар че животът е жалка минута. Площадите шумни не виждат доброто, ненужно за тях... като стара хартия. Но просякът там е. И тихо, и скромно сърцата на всички в гърдите му бият.”

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Book:Вечен чужденец
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“You may be the only person left who believes in you, but it's enough. It takes just one star to pierce a universe of darkness. Never give up.”

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Book:Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, & Grumblings for Every Day of the Year
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“Museums alone cannot ease the tensions that come from the debates surrounding the fluidity of national identity in the twenty-first century. Nor can any cultural institution solve the problems of poverty, racial injustice, and police violence. But museums can contribute to understanding by creating spaces where debates are spirited but reasoned. Where contemporary challenges are addressed through contextualization and education.”

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Book:A Fool's Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump
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