“The poverty of yesterday was less squalid than the poverty we purchase with our industry today.”
Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature
"The Elderly Lady", in Brodie's Report (1970); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)
Context: The poverty of yesterday was less squalid than the poverty we purchase with our industry today. Fortunes were smaller then as well.