"We would all like a reputation for generosity and we'd all like to buy it cheap"
About this Quote
Everyone wants the glow of generosity; McLaughlin’s jab is that most of us want it at a discount. The line works because it treats virtue like a consumer good, something you can acquire through clever shopping rather than costly practice. “Reputation” is the tell: she’s not attacking giving so much as the social economy around giving, where the appearance of largesse can be more valuable than the sacrifice itself. In that world, generosity becomes branding.
The punch comes from the quiet pivot between “be” and “be seen.” A reputation is public-facing; it depends on witnesses, on story, on the right kind of receipt. McLaughlin implies we’re drawn to charitable acts that double as self-advertising: the donation with our name attached, the gesture that’s noticed, the tip calibrated for maximum gratitude per dollar. “Buy it cheap” also needles the way we try to offload the real costs of kindness: time, inconvenience, sustained attention, the risk of being taken for granted. We’ll pay cash before we’ll pay ourselves.
As a mid-century American journalist, McLaughlin is writing from inside a culture newly fluent in consumer psychology and status goods, where postwar affluence made “being good” increasingly performative. Her cynicism isn’t nihilistic; it’s corrective. She’s pointing to the uncomfortable truth that ethics has a price tag, and we keep checking for sales. The quote endures because it catches a modern impulse perfectly: to outsource character to optics, and then haggle over the bill.
The punch comes from the quiet pivot between “be” and “be seen.” A reputation is public-facing; it depends on witnesses, on story, on the right kind of receipt. McLaughlin implies we’re drawn to charitable acts that double as self-advertising: the donation with our name attached, the gesture that’s noticed, the tip calibrated for maximum gratitude per dollar. “Buy it cheap” also needles the way we try to offload the real costs of kindness: time, inconvenience, sustained attention, the risk of being taken for granted. We’ll pay cash before we’ll pay ourselves.
As a mid-century American journalist, McLaughlin is writing from inside a culture newly fluent in consumer psychology and status goods, where postwar affluence made “being good” increasingly performative. Her cynicism isn’t nihilistic; it’s corrective. She’s pointing to the uncomfortable truth that ethics has a price tag, and we keep checking for sales. The quote endures because it catches a modern impulse perfectly: to outsource character to optics, and then haggle over the bill.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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