Daily Inspiration Quote by Jeffrey Bernard

Snobbery usually pretends it runs on taste; Bernard admits his runs on payroll. The line is funny because it’s bluntly petty, then quietly moral. “Despised” is an ugly verb to volunteer about yourself, and he volunteers it anyway, with that little throat-clear of “Although I have to admit” - a half-confession that doubles as a dare. He’s not asking to be absolved; he’s inviting you to recognize the impulse.

The target isn’t simply wealth. It’s the kind of life that has never been rubbed raw by obligation: alarms, bosses, Monday mornings, the low-grade humiliation of needing a wage. “Never had a job” isn’t a compliment for aristocratic leisure here; it’s an accusation of being uninitiated into the shared civilian misery that acts as modern social glue. Bernard, a journalist whose persona was forged in pubs and deadlines, treats work as a credibility test. If you’ve never been trapped by necessity, maybe you haven’t earned your opinions about the rest of us.

The subtext is class resentment, but with a twist: it’s also resentment of insulation. He’s attacking a specific kind of unearned ease that masquerades as sophistication. The comedy comes from how he frames it as a mere “couple of people,” as if this were a rare personal quirk rather than a common, culturally sanctioned prejudice. Bernard’s real point is that idleness isn’t neutral; it can be a privilege so total it reads, to those who don’t have it, as a character flaw.