Here, then, is the pitiful fix of the rich man; here is that needle’s eye in which he stuck already in the days of Christ, and still sticks to-day, firmer, if possible, than ever: that he has the money and lacks the love which should make his money acceptable. Here and now, just as of old in Palestine, he has the rich to dinner, it is with the rich that he takes his pleasure: and when his turn comes to be charitable, he looks in vain for a recipient. His friends are not poor, they do not want; the poor are not his friends, they will not take. To whom is he to give?

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet

Essay (1888-03), “Beggars,” sec. 4, Scribner’s Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 3
    (Source)

Collected in Across the Plains, ch. 9 (1892).