Vagrancy Quotes

Bums are the well-to-do of this day. They didn't have as far to fall.

However careful a tramp may be to avoid places where there is abundant work, he cannot always succeed.

The poor who have neither property, friends, nor strength to labor are boarded in the houses of good farmers, to whom a stipulated sum is annually paid. To those who are able to help themselves a little or have friends from whom they derive some succor, inadequate however to their full maintenance, supplementary aids are given which enable them to live comfortably in their own houses or in the houses of their friends. Vagabonds without visible property or vocation, are placed in work houses, where they are well clothed, fed, lodged, and made to labor.

A wandering family [in Ireland] will fix themselves under a dry bank and with a few sticks, furze, fern, etc,, make up a hovel much worse than an English pigsty, and support themselves how they can by work, begging, and stealing.

The Master will allow him no home, that he may become a vagrant. Becoming a vagrant, he will arrest him as a vagabond, and visit him with imprisonment and stripes ... He will shut him off from the courts, seal his mouth as a witness.

I live in New York full time. I can't live in L.A., because I fear people think I'm a vagrant there.

I grew up poor. I never had any money. I was a hobo, you know, ride the freights.

A subject to which few intellectuals ever give a thought is the right to be a vagrant, the freedom to wander.

There is quite a large clan of Scotties among American beggars. He is a good beggar for the simple reason that he is a good talker. Almost every Scotch beggar I met in the States of America was inclined to be talkative, and yet they all managed to conceal their private affairs.

I basically live out of my truck - I mean from place to place. I feel more at home in my truck than just about anywhere, which is a sad thing to say, but it's true.

An evil and a reproach to our municipality, for which the laws and ordinances afford no adequate remedy. I allude to the constantly increasing number of vagrants, idle and vicious children of both sexes, who infest our public thoroughfares, hotels, docks, &c.; children who are growing up in ignorance and profligacy, only destined to a life of misery, shame and crime, and ultimately to a felon's doom. Their numbers are almost incredible, and to those whose business and habits do not permit them a searching scrutiny, the degrading and disgusting practices of these almost infants, in the school of vice, prostitution and rowdyism, would certainly be beyond belief… they never see the inside of a schoolroom; and so far as our excellent system of public education is concerned, and which may be truly said to be the foundation stone of our free institutions, is to them an entire nullity. Left in many instances to roam day and night wherever their inclination leads them, a large proportion of these juvenile vagrants are in the daily practice of pilfering wherever opportunity offers, and begging when they cannot steal.

A subject to which few intellectuals ever give a thought is the right to be a vagrant, the freedom to wander. Yet vagrancy is a deliverance, and life on the open road is the essence of freedom. To have the courage to smash the chains with which modern life has weighted us (under the pretext that it was offering us more liberty), then to take up the symbolic stick and bundle and get out.

In Irish law, busking is considered vagrancy - you can be arrested for it. It's risky asking people for money in public. So it's not like it's a high-art job. And people who do it as a high-art job make very little money.

Traditionally, lots of vagrants and unemployable characters wind up working in kitchens.

BEGGAR, n. One who has relied on the assistance of his friends.

Portsmouth has the honor, I believe, of establishing the first recorded pauper workhouse - though not in connection with her poets, as might naturally be supposed.

The cowardly belief that a person must stay in one place is too reminiscent of the unquestioning resignation of animals, beasts of burden stupefied by servitude and yet always willing to accept the slipping on of the harness. There are limits to every domain, and laws to govern every organized power. But the vagrant owns the whole vast earth that ends only at the non-existent horizon, and her empire is an intangible one, for her domination and enjoyment of it are things of the spirit.

I was 14, and I left on my own. Living in a subway train, and police used to come in with a nightstick and say, 'You can't sleep here.' I'd get up and go across the street, get on another train, and go back the other way.

To be shelterless and alone in the open country, hearing the wind moan and watching for day through the whole long weary night; to listen to the falling rain, and crouch for warmth beneath the lee of some old barn or rick, or in the hollow of a tree; are dismal things - but not so dismal as the wandering up and down where shelter is, and beds and sleepers are by thousands; a houseless rejected creature.

It's called loitering, which is like littering with human beings as the trash.

He went, ever on the move, with the slow, shuffling step of wandering beggars who are nowhere at home.

Trailer for sale or rent, rooms to let, fifty cents. No phone, no pool, no pets, ain't got no big regrets. Two hours of pushin' broom, buys an eight by twelve, four-bit room. I'm a man of means, by no means, king of the road.

Once leprosy had gone, and the figure of the leper was no more than a distant memory, these structures still remained. The game of exclusion would be played again, often in these same places, in an oddly similar fashion two or three centuries later. The role of the leper was to be played by the poor and by the vagrant, by prisoners and by the 'alienated', and the sort of salvation at stake for both parties in this game of exclusion is the matter of this study.

The legislation of the age about " vagabonds" is written in blood. The only remedy suggested was to punish the vagrant by cruel tortures—by whipping and branding. Even death was resorted to after a second or third offence; and though these penalties proved very ineffectual, the system was not abandoned till the law of 43 Elizabeth recognized that punishment had failed as a remedy

All common players of interludes [actors] ... other than players belonging to any baron of this realm ... or to be authorized to play under the hand and seal of such baron or personage, shall be adjudged and deemed rogues and vagabonds.