Daily Inspiration Quote by Wilkie Collins

Romance is fine, Wilkie Collins suggests, as long as it clears the basic accounting test. The line lands because it borrows the breezy permissiveness of a modern friend giving advice, then quietly swaps in a brutal Victorian premise: love is volatile, but money is the fuel that keeps it burning without burning the couple down. “Hasty marriages” aren’t condemned on moral grounds; they’re treated like a risky investment that becomes acceptable when properly underwritten.

Collins’s intent is slyly corrective. Victorian culture loved the language of passion while structuring marriage around property, inheritance, and social stability. By pairing “mutual flame” with “adequate income,” he punctures the sentimental facade and admits what polite society preferred to euphemize. The word “adequate” is doing a lot of work: not wealth, not extravagance, just enough to keep the household from turning desire into resentment. It’s a low bar that still exposes how conditional “true love” is allowed to be.

The subtext is less “gold-digging is good” than “pretending economics don’t govern intimacy is a convenient lie.” Collins, a novelist attuned to the mechanics of suspense and social constraint, frames marriage as a pressure system: passion accelerates decisions; money regulates consequences. The wit comes from how casually he states it, as if everyone already knows. That casualness is the critique. In a world where women’s options were narrowed and reputations could be ruined quickly, “hasty” wasn’t just romantic impulsiveness; it was a social hazard. Cash, he implies, is the safety net that lets society forgive the leap.