Wealth & Money Quote by Fannie Hurst

A single sentence, sharpened to a pin: Fannie Hurst skewers the oldest American magic trick, where money doesn’t just buy comfort but buys identity. The jab isn’t aimed at wealth itself so much as at the lazy alchemy that turns possession into virtue. “Some people think” is doing quiet work here; it frames the belief as a social contagion, not a private quirk. And “just because” is the knife twist, stripping away the usual defenses - hard work, merit, destiny - leaving only the blunt fact of having.

Hurst wrote in a country drunk on its own success story, then sobered by economic collapse. In that arc, cash becomes both a status signal and a moral shortcut. The line reads like a rebuttal to a culture that confuses price with value: if you can afford it, you must deserve it; if you can’t, something must be wrong with you. Hurst’s social novels often map the humiliations and bargains people make to be accepted. This quip belongs to that world: wealth is portrayed as a kind of counterfeit self-esteem, mass-produced and widely believed.

The subtext is moral but not preachy. She’s not asking the rich to feel guilty; she’s asking everyone else to notice the con. If money can manufacture “worth,” then worth is market-flimsy, and the market is the wrong god to worship. The sentence lands because it refuses ornament. It’s plainspoken, almost conversational - the tone of someone watching a room, clocking the unearned confidence, and naming it.