Life & Wisdom Quote by Katherine Fullerton Gerould

Gerould’s line lands like a polite letter-opener: small, sharp, and designed to puncture the self-flattering myths people tell about their generosity. “Most men” isn’t a throwaway generalization so much as a cold statistical shrug. She’s not hunting for monsters; she’s describing the default setting. The first clause (“wanted as much as they could get”) frames desire as elastic and opportunistic, less about need than about the thrill of acquisition and the social permission to keep reaching.

Then comes the kicker: “possession has always blunted the fine edge of their altruism.” The metaphor does the heavy lifting. Altruism isn’t portrayed as fake; it’s real but delicate, a blade that requires frictionless conditions to stay sharp. Possession dulls it not because wealth automatically makes someone evil, but because ownership rearranges perception: once you have, you begin to experience holding on as prudence and letting go as loss. Generosity becomes an exception you must justify, not an instinct you can trust.

The subtext is a critique of moral self-image in an era when “philanthropy” was increasingly public, institutional, and reputational. Gerould, writing in a world shaped by rapid industrial accumulation and conspicuous giving, is suspicious of the way comfort can anesthetize conscience. The “always” repetition reads less like timeless wisdom than an indictment of how reliably history repeats the same bargain: we want credit for caring, but we also want to keep what we’ve got. The sentence refuses to moralize loudly; its restraint is the point. It assumes the audience will recognize themselves before they can argue back.