MONEY TALK | September 17th 2008
As part of our "Couples + Money" series in the autumn issue of Intelligent Life magazine, Jakub Figurski has compiled some juicy quotes on the subject. "Sex is like money", John Updike once wrote, "only too much is enough" ...

From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, Autumn 2008

 

Money is the sinews of love, as of war.

~ George Farquhar, "Love and a Bottle", 1698

 

His designs were strictly honourable, as the saying is; that is, to rob a lady of her fortune by way of marriage.

~ Henry Fielding, "Tom Jones", 1729

 

So they were married--to be the more
together--
And found they were never again so much together,
Divided by the morning tea,
By the evening paper,
By children and trademen’s bills.

~ Louis MacNeice, "Les Sylphides", 1941

 

Marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she’s a householder.

~ Thornton Wilder, "The Merchant of Yonkers", 1955

 

Those who have some means think that the most important thing in the world is love. The poor know that it is money.

~ Gerald Brenan, "Thoughts in a Dry Season: A Miscellany", 1978

 

But I do not approve of mercenary marriages. When I married Lord Bracknell I had no fortune of any kind. But I mever dreamed for a moment of allowing that to stand in my way.

~ Oscar Wilde, "The Importance of Being Earnest" [said by Lady Bracknell], 1895

 

The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through eternity.

~ Goethe, "Elective Affinities", 1808

 

A married woman is a slave whom one must put on a throne.

~ Honoré de Balzac, "Physiologie du mariage", 1829

 

I never hated a man enough to give him diamonds back.

~ Zsa Zsa Gabor, quoted in the Observer, 1957

 

Doänt thou marry for munny, but goä where money is!

~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Northern Farmer", 1869

 

This I set down as a positive truth. A woman with fair opportunities and without a positive hump, may marry whom she likes.

~ W. M. Thackeray, "Vanity Fair", 1848

 

Sex is like money; only too much is enough.

~ John Updike, "Couples", 1968

 

Money speaks, but it speaks with a male voice. In the hands of women, money stays literal, count it out, it buys what it is worth or less. In the hands of men, money buys women, sex, status, dignity, esteem, recognition, loyalty, all manner of possibility.

~ Andrea Dworkin, "Pornography: Men Possessing Women", 1981

 

Next day, I shopped. Clothes for my man, mainly,
But one or two treats for myself from Bloomingdale’s.

~ Carol Ann Duffy, 'Queen Kong’, from "The World’s Wife", 2001

 

Homer:
I'll buy her that pony she's always bugging me for.

Marge:
We can't afford to buy a pony.

Homer:
Marge, with today's gasoline prices, we can't afford not to buy a pony.

Marge:
You sound like you're going to buy a pony. Promise me you won't.

Homer:
Mm.

Marge:
What was that? Was that a yes or a no?

Homer:
Buh!

Marge:
Those aren't even words!

Homer:
Snuh!

Marge:
Mmmmm. [turns off the light]

Homer:
[huge grin]

~ "The Simpsons", season 3, episode 8, 1991

 

Picture credit: imagesbykim/flickr and Material Boy/flickr

See also: Joanna Moorhead on what money says about relationships and Simon Cox on the economics of coupledom.

(Jakub Figurski is an editorial assistant for Intelligent Life.)