Wealth & Money Quote by Samuel Beckett

A compliment that curdles mid-sentence: Beckett takes the cozy nationalist metaphor of "the cream of Ireland" and spikes it with viscosity. "Rich and thick" sounds indulgent until you hear the aftertaste - not just affluent, but stodgy; not merely elite, but congealed. It is social critique delivered as a deadpan culinary aside, the kind of line that smiles while it draws blood.

The intent is to puncture the prestige aura around Dublin University (read: Trinity College) by reframing it as an exclusionary dairy product: skimmed from the rest of the country and left to sit. In early-20th-century Ireland, Trinity carried the weight of class and colonial history, an institution long associated with Anglo-Irish privilege, Protestant ascendancy, and a version of "Ireland" that didn't always match the country's self-image after independence. Beckett, an insider who never quite played along with belonging, aims at that mismatch.

The subtext is that the "cream" isn't naturally rising; it's separated. Beckett's gag hinges on a double meaning: "rich" as moneyed and "rich" as overfattened, even nauseating. "Thick" lands as texture and as intellect gone complacent: a closed circuit of education that can become self-satisfied, insulated, slow to move.

It works because the line is small and specific. No manifesto, no righteous thunder - just a twist of language that turns social hierarchy into something you can almost smell. Beckett's cynicism is procedural: expose the myth by literalizing it, then let the audience do the grim math.