STREET DOGS

The “best thing that money gives you is better choices. People who do not have any money have terrible choices. A lot of people who own a lot of expensive things are in debt and don’t have the ability to make good choices in their life. Liquidity matters.” — Anon.

“Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. Some of you are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed time. It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough, called by the Latins aes alienum, another’s brass, for some of their coins were made of brass; still living, and dying, and buried by this other’s brass; always promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent; seeking to curry favour, to get custom, by how many modes … lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous generosity, that you may persuade your neighbour to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for him; making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day, something to be tucked away in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, in the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how little.” —

“Debt is great source of inner unhappiness.” — Debasish Mridha

Michel Pireu (pireum@streetdogs.co.za)