Homeless Quotes

In order to master compassion, you have to spend time getting to know monsters. When you can do that you will see that there are no monsters, only people that acted like monsters because no one gave them the time or compassion to hear their story.

~ Shannon L. Alder

We are homeless enough in this world under the best of circumstances without going to any special effort to test our capacity to be more so.

~ Harold Edmund Stearns

Happiness lives in every corner of your home and if you are homeless, it lives under the leaves of trees, hiding beneath the sky's cloudiness. All you need to do is to find it with patience.

~ Munia Khan

When an officer finds themselves arresting pastors that are feeding people who have nothing, they should know they’re on the wrong side.

~ Justin King

Begging is much more difficult than it looks. Contrary to popular belief, it’s a high art form that takes years of dedicated practice to master.

~ Sol Luckman

For the mentally disturbed, Marie knew these sandwich visits might be the only dependable moments in their lives. She also knew she delivered the sandwiches for her own sanity. Something would crumble inside of her if she ever walked by a homeless person and pretended not to notice. Or simply didn't care. In a way, she believed that homeless people were treated as Indians had always been treated. Badly. The homeless were like an Indian tribe, nomadic and powerless, just filled with more than any tribe's share of crazy people and cripples. So, a homeless Indian belonged to two tribes, and was the lowest form of life in the city. The powerful white men of Seattle had created a law that made it illegal to sit on the sidewalk. That ordinance was crazier and much more evil than any homeless person. Sometimes Marie wondered if she worked so hard at anything only because she hated powerful white men. She wondered if she went to college and received good grades just because she was looking for revenge.

~ Sherman Alexie

Then, left alone, shivering, I happened to glance up. I stood, I froze, blinking up through the drift, the drift, the silent drift of blinding snow. I saw the high hotel windows, the lights, the shadows.What's it like up there? I thought. Are fires lit? Is it warm as breath? Who are all those people? Are they drinking? Are they happy?Do they even know I'm HERE?

~ Ray Bradbury

You'd be surprised how difficult it is to ask alms of a stranger when you've never done it before, what a psychological barrier separates the honest man from the panhandler. (Dusk To Dawn)

~ Cornell Woolrich

I have to find a place to hideAn island in the seaSurrounded by a racing tideWhere I can live with me

~ Laurie Matthew

Without love even the most radical devotion to God is of no value to Him. Let me make sure that sinks in… You can gain all the spiritual gifts in the world. You can take the most radical steps of obedience. You can share every meal with the homeless in your city. You can memorize the book of Leviticus. You can pray each morning for four hours like Martin Luther. But if what you do does not flow out of a heart of love - a heart that does those things because it genuinely desires to do them - it is ultimately worthless to God.

~ J.d. Greear

Strength of character comes from being hit by stray verbal stones, while protecting discarded ciphers in the snow.

~ Shannon L. Alder

I will never again look at the homeless people the way I did before entering Bowery Mission.

~ Stevan V. Nikolic

When we feel haunted, it is the pull of our own home we're experiencing, but a more upsetting possibility is that the past has become homeless, and we are offering it a place to inhabit in the present.

~ Yiyun Li

Long has been this road called life. Every time you venture out in this road, remember. Home is within. Home is in you.

~ Minhal Mehdi

Clothes are a homeless man’s home.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

To a homeless man, home is literally where the heart is.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The thing I miss most from home, is having a home.

~ Anthony Liccione

It's irresponsible to think things are just going to work out because you believe things happen for a reason. I refuse to accept these things. I refuse to give in to that absurdity. You saw what happened in Lucille and you lived with Col all those years. You know the suffering they went through. Even this place. There are so many empty houses yet so many homeless. Society is breaking. The kingdoms are failing them.

~ Celia Mcmahon

If I came to your town and asked any person on the street, “Which church should I go to if I want to get involved in helping the poor or homeless in this community?” would your church be the first one mentioned? Make this identity your goal.

~ Dillon Burroughs

The absolute defining moment of my life was the day the drug deal went bad. It started out just like any other day, at least for the girlfriend of a dealer. However, this time, it went bad. Really bad.

~ Valerie Fries Wade

As Elizabeth Blackmar and Ray Rosenzweig wrote in their magisterial history of [Central Park in NYC]: 'The issue of demoncratic access to the park has also been raised by the increasing number of homeless New Yorkers. Poor people--from the 'squatters' of the 1850s to the 'tramps' of the 1870s and 1890s to the Hooverville residents of the 1930s--have always turned to the park land for shelter...The growing visibility of homeless people in Central Park osed in the starkest terms the contradiction between Americans' commitment to democratic space and their acquiescence in vast disparities of wealth and power.

~ Rebecca Solnit

In its timeless capacity to embody the human condition, the vampire is a poignant metaphor describing the psychosocial experience of the pariah - the outsider. The vampire is the Other that used to be human. The diseased, the mentally challenged, the homeless and hungry, ......are all vampires in a way; the other who used to be human, the invisible who casts no reflection among us.

~ Katherine Ramsland

I applied at Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard after my band broke up. I really wanted to work there because it involved the love of my life, music. It was also located on the world famous Sunset Strip, a place I dreamed of going to ever since I was a teenager in the 80's to become a rock star.

~ K.d. Sanders

I have come to your group for somewhere to belong, I promise I shall adapt before too long, I will accept anything you ask me to, I have come a long way, I have run away from home''But you are not like us', the pigeon said to her'You cannot come and pretend you do,Pack your bags and go somewhere new,You can't even sing our song, This is not your home'All the other pigeons stopped talking and staredAnd their looks made it clear that they also sharedThat Romy could no longer stay and Romy felt there was no other wayBut to accept and fly away.

~ Elise Icten

JUST LISTEN“When your mind is quiet and you listen closely, you will hear the children weeping silently. If you can’t quite hear their cries, then listen with your eyes. These are the children of the streets, who have learned pain and suffering before they ever had a chance to experience life. Do not ignore their cries for help, for all they wish is that you will rescue them. They do not have a family that wants them, they don’t know how it feels to be loved and they’ve never lived anywhere that felt like home…the streets are where they find their voice and relief from all of the suffering.Just listen and you’ll see them.

~ Paige Dearth

His body had become a companion which seemed always about to leave him: it had its own pains which moved him to pity, and its own particular movements which he tried hard to follow. He had learned from it how to keep his eyes down on the road, so that he could see no one, and how important it was never to look back - although there were times when memories of an earlier life filled him with grief and he lay face down upon the grass until the sweet rank odour of the earth brought him to his senses. But slowly he forgot where it was he had come from, and what it was he was escaping.

~ Peter Ackroyd

When people say there is no place like home, the first to agree are the homeless.

~ J.r. Rim

The mission sat in a converted store front on the corner of a medium-busy street. There was a small crowd gathered in front - no real surprise, since they gave out food and clothing, all all you had to do was spend a few moments of your life listening to the good reverend explain why you were going to Hell. It seemed like a pretty good bargain, even to me, but I wasn't hungry.

~ Jeff Lindsay

I've been all over the place in all kinds of living situations. Due to the fact that my mind is my own worst enemy. In a way I am perpetually and permanently in a state of rehabilitation m in an attempt to rehabilitate from the shock of being born.Some people are too sensitive to withstand that.

~ Heather O'neill

Between shortage and absolute poverty an ocean of shades and gradations do emerge on the scale of deficiency. Be that as it may, each stage must find a mode to leave a door ajar for the sun to peer in and human warmth to radiate. ( Homeless down in the corner)

~ Erik Pevernagie

What would it hurt for me to give that homeless guy a couple bucks? Who the hell cares if he spends it on beer? Maybe beer is a step up for him from the harder stuff that knocked him onto the streets in the first place. Maybe, just maybe, he’s actually going to spend it on food (homeless people do eat, right?). Maybe, he really is a desperate human being who is trying to change his situation.

~ Dan Pearce

If I were rich, I would buy him a new black suit. ... If I had next week's allowance and had not spent this week's on three Cherry Flips ...

~ M.f.k. Fisher

It’s a full-time job being homeless. It’s a full-time job being poor.

~ John Connolly

If a homeless person has a funny sign, he hasn't been homeless for that long. A real homeless person is too hungry to be funny.

~ Chris Rock

Whenever a homeless person speaks to me in the USA, I always assume that I am speaking to a police officer and play along with the suspected charade.

~ Steven Magee

I respect everyone, from the homeless brother and sister on the street to the executive that sits in the highest office named President Barack Obama. I respect everyone - but we over-respect no one.

~ Mo'nique

I just think if I can go from being a homeless kid with a dream of being in the biggest band in the world and making that happen, I can do a lot of other cool stuff, too.

~ Nikki Sixx

Starbucks is the last public space with chairs. It's a shower for homeless people. And it's a place you can write all day. The baristas don't glare at you. They don't even look at you.

~ Mike Birbiglia

With a track like 'White Christmas,' everybody has done that song in every format you can imagine, so I just looked at the chords at that particular song and what chords would make it work. That's kind of quite a sad song, and I had this idea of someone singing it in the subway, someone who is homeless, old and sad.

~ Vince Clarke

I grew up with a family that had very little and were at times homeless.

~ Misha Collins