Thursday, June 07, 2007

If I were a rich man

Famed Minnesotan F. Scott Fitzgerald never actually said "The rich are different from you and me." Instead, in his short story, "The Rich Boy," he said this:

"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different. The only way I can describe young Anson Hunter is to approach him as if he were a foreigner and cling stubbornly to my point of view. If I accept his for a moment I am lost--I have nothing to show but a preposterous movie."

You can read the entire short story online here.

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