Wealth & Money Quote by Samuel Butler

Butler’s line works because it dresses misogyny in the tailored suit of epigram: brisk, balanced, and wickedly quotable. The opening clause sets up a familiar moral hierarchy. A brigand is a villain, but at least he’s honest about the terms of the transaction: cash or survival. Then Butler snaps the trap shut, recasting “women” as the more sophisticated predator, extracting not only resources but vitality itself. The joke lands on escalation - from robbery to total depletion - and on a sly impersonation of worldly wisdom, as if the speaker is merely reporting a hard-earned truth.

The subtext is less “women are expensive” than “female intimacy is a form of coercion.” It translates marriage, courtship, and domestic obligation into economic violence, implying that what men lose in relationships is not chosen but taken. That framing flatters a certain male self-image: the put-upon provider, spiritually pickpocketed by desire and duty. It also absolves men of their own appetites. If romance is theft, the thief is always someone else.

Context matters. Butler wrote in Victorian England, where marriage was both social destiny and financial arrangement, and where anxiety about women’s growing visibility (education, property rights, public life) simmered under polite manners. The line gives that anxiety a laugh track. It’s satire without the courageous target: instead of skewering the institution that commodifies love, it blames the people most constrained by it. That’s why it still circulates - not because it’s true, but because it’s efficient: a one-liner that turns resentment into wit.