Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows: Origin - From Shakespeare's The Tempest: Alas, the storm is come again! my best way is to creep under his gaberdine; there is no other shelter hereabouts: misery acquaints a man with strange bed-fellows. I will here shroud till the dregs of the storm be past. http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/248250.html In the 19th century it was adapted by Lord Lytton: "Poverty has strange bedfellows". Also there is "necessity makes strange bedfellows". POLITICS MAKES STRANGE BEDFELLOWS - "enemies forced by circumstances to work together; members of an unlikely alliance, often attacked as an 'unholy alliance.' 'True it is,' wrote Charles Dudley Warner in 1850, 'that politics makes strange bedfellows.' Warner, editor of the 'Hartford (Conn.) Courant,' was co-author with Mark Twain of 'The Gilded Age,'; he might have taken the expression from Edward George Bulwer-Lytton's novel 'The Caxtons,' published in 1849, which contained the phrase 'Poverty has strange bedfellows.' More likely the source for both was Act II, scene 2 of Shakespeare's 'The Tempest'." From "Safire's New Political Dictionary" by William Safire (Random House, New York, 1993). Page 762-763. http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/45/messages/158.html