"There is none to tell the rich to go on striving, for a rich man makes the law that hallows and hollows his own life"
About this Quote
O'Casey lands a blade where polite society prefers velvet: the rich don’t need motivation because they don’t answer to motivation. They answer to themselves. “None to tell the rich to go on striving” flips the usual moral script, the one that treats ambition as a universal virtue. In his framing, striving is for people who still have to prove something to someone. Wealth, by contrast, is its own permission slip.
The line’s engine is the double move in “hallows and hollows.” The rich man “makes the law” not merely in the legislative sense but in the cultural one: he defines what counts as respectable, what counts as success, what gets called “hard work” versus “greed.” That law “hallows” his life by sanctifying his choices, laundering self-interest into civic contribution. At the same time, it “hollows” him out, because a life insulated from consequence tends to lose its moral texture. If you can rewrite the rules, you rarely develop the muscles that come from living under them.
O'Casey’s context matters: an Irish dramatist shaped by poverty, labor politics, and the hypocrisies of church-and-state respectability. His plays often stage the clash between lofty ideals and the brutal accounting of rent, wages, and status. This sentence carries that theatrical bite: not a lecture, a diagnosis. The subtext is that inequality isn’t only material; it’s narrative control. The richest person in the room doesn’t just have more options. He gets to decide which options are admirable, and which are punishable.
The line’s engine is the double move in “hallows and hollows.” The rich man “makes the law” not merely in the legislative sense but in the cultural one: he defines what counts as respectable, what counts as success, what gets called “hard work” versus “greed.” That law “hallows” his life by sanctifying his choices, laundering self-interest into civic contribution. At the same time, it “hollows” him out, because a life insulated from consequence tends to lose its moral texture. If you can rewrite the rules, you rarely develop the muscles that come from living under them.
O'Casey’s context matters: an Irish dramatist shaped by poverty, labor politics, and the hypocrisies of church-and-state respectability. His plays often stage the clash between lofty ideals and the brutal accounting of rent, wages, and status. This sentence carries that theatrical bite: not a lecture, a diagnosis. The subtext is that inequality isn’t only material; it’s narrative control. The richest person in the room doesn’t just have more options. He gets to decide which options are admirable, and which are punishable.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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