Wealth & Money Quote by O. Henry

O. Henry nails a whole moral biography in one crooked sentence: a man so allergic to other people’s prosperity that money itself becomes an insult. The line works because it refuses the respectable language of “ambition” or “hard times” and frames greed as wounded pride. A dollar in someone else’s hand isn’t an opportunity or a reminder of inequality; it’s a provocation. That twist turns theft from a calculated act into an emotional reflex, the kind of petty, simmering resentment that can masquerade as principle.

The phrasing “personal grudge” is the knife. Grudges are intimate; they require a narrative of wrong done. O. Henry suggests the character manufactures that narrative on contact, converting ordinary commerce into a private feud. Then comes the kicker: “if he couldn’t take it any other way.” It’s a cynical hedge that implies the man will gladly take it honestly if possible, but the real constant is taking. Ethics are just a route, not a restraint.

Context matters with O. Henry: he wrote at the seam where Gilded Age hustle met urban precarity, when the gap between the flashy winners and the barely-holding-on was visible on every street. His best stories skewer not only crooks but the romantic myths that excuse them. This line doesn’t ask us to pity the thief; it asks us to recognize the psychology that turns envy into entitlement, and entitlement into action. It’s funny in its bluntness, then grim when you realize how familiar the mechanism is.