Wealth & Money Quote by Mary Wortley

Money isn’t just comfort here; it’s leverage, and Mary Wortley is blunt about wanting it in the “right” hands. The line turns wealth from a private indulgence into a public obligation: a “duty” to be rich so you can “do good.” That phrasing performs a neat moral inversion. Instead of apologizing for privilege, it sanctifies it, reframing accumulation as preparation for benevolence. The kicker - “riches being another word for power” - strips away polite euphemism. She names what polite society often dodges: cash is authority, access, and control over outcomes.

The intent feels less like piety than strategy. In an era when formal political power was overwhelmingly male and property laws hemmed in women’s autonomy, “riches” offered one of the few widely legible ways to move the world: patronage, charity, influence in networks that mattered. Calling wealth a duty also preemptively answers the accusation of vanity. If you’re rich, you’re not merely fortunate; you’re tasked.

The subtext, though, is the era’s favorite bargain with inequality: concentrated power can be redeemed if it’s exercised “well.” It’s noblesse oblige with sharper edges, because it admits what that doctrine often disguises: “doing good” can be indistinguishable from choosing what “good” looks like for other people. Wortley’s sentence is persuasive because it’s candid about the mechanics of society, even as it smuggles in a comforting premise - that the powerful can justify themselves by promising to be useful.