Wealth & Money Quote by John Milton

Milton lands this line like a cold coin on a hard table: the world pays greed, and lets restraint die quietly. The phrasing is almost legalistic - "True it is that" - as if he is granting a grim concession before returning to moral argument. That rhetorical move matters. Milton, the great champion of virtue and liberty, isn’t romanticizing goodness here; he’s admitting the scandal that virtue can be economically suicidal in a society built to reward appetite.

The punch sits in the paired personifications. "Covetousness is rich" turns a vice into a successful social climber; "modesty starves" turns a virtue into a beggar. It’s not just observation, it’s accusation: the culture’s value system is inverted, and everyone knows it. The subtext is aimed at readers tempted to mistake prosperity for righteousness. If you take wealth as proof of merit, Milton suggests, you’re already halfway to endorsing the vice that produced it.

Contextually, Milton writes in a 17th-century England where money, patronage, and political power were tightly braided, and where Puritan moral seriousness collided with courtly display and emerging commercial life. The line reads as both social realism and moral pressure. He’s daring the audience to face an uncomfortable fact: integrity doesn’t automatically come with dividends. The intended effect is bracing, not consoling - to steel the virtuous for material loss, and to strip the rich of their alibi that success equals goodness.