Compassion & Homeless

Compassion
In the story Compassion by Babara Lazear Ascher there are three quotes that really stood out to me. The first quote is the first sentence of the story, it says "The man's grin is less the result of circumstance than dreams or madness." This quote stood out to me because it means that a homeless person's smile isn't because of the circumstance that he is in but more of the dreams that he has or because he is crazy. This quote is true because you are constantly finding homeless people who smile and you always ask yourself why is he smiling shouldn't he be depressed and sad he's homelss. Ascher on the other hand seems to beleive that he is smiling either because of the dreams he says or because he is crazy. Another quote that stood out to be was the quote "Raw humanity offends our sensibilities." What Ascher means by this is that when we see homeless people it offends us because it's proof that what we have can just go away in a blind of an eye. She believes this is why we give them money when they ask she says that we do it out of fear and so they could go away. The last quote that stood out to me was the quote "There, but for the grace of God, go I." This quote stood out because it's true. Most people give homeless people money out of the kindness of their heart they believe in this quote because it says that they gave homeless people money out of the grace of God. They did it because of God.

Homeless by Anna Quindlen
This story is about homeless people and how they are looked at by society and people who have homes. Quindlen says "You are where you live." When she says this she is talking about a homeless person who she once talked to. She says that the women gave her a picture of a home that she once lived in to prove she was somebody and that she wasn't homeless. Quindlen says "You are where you live" to say that the women was somebody. Another quote that stood out to me was the quote "Home is where the heart is." In this quote she is using the homeless women as in example of how home is where the heart is. She talks about how all homeless people would rather live in the streets and sleep in subways then to go to a homeless shelter because it's not where their heart is. The women that Quindlen was talking about proved this because of the picture she showed Quindlen. She was saying that that house was her home and no where else. The last quote that stood out was the quote "Homes have stopped being homes. Now they are real estate." With this quote Quindlen says that homes aren't what they used to be. Back then you lived in a home because your parents and grandparents lived there. They used to belong to you. Now you got the government always trying to take that away from you. Your home belongs to the government not to you anymore. That's the reason why we have homeless people in the world, because they are constanstly loosing your home to the government.