Hard Times Wealth Quotes

How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #1

'You see, my friend,' Mr. Bounderby put in, 'we are the kind of people who know the value of time, and you are the kind of people who don't know the value of time.' 'I have not,' retorted Mr. Childers, after surveying him from head to foot, 'the honour of knowing you, — but if you mean that you can make more money of your time than I can of mine, I should judge from your appearance, that you are about right.' (1.6.13-14)

Bounderby cannot think of anything – even time – except as it relates to money. Childers, on the other hand, apparently does not think that time can only be expressed in terms of its financial value.

Quote #2

If Bounderby had been a Conqueror, and Mrs. Sparsit a captive Princess whom he took about as a feature in his state-processions, he could not have made a greater flourish with her than he habitually did. Just as it belonged to his boastfulness to depreciate his own extraction, so it belonged to it to exalt Mrs. Sparsit's. In the measure that he would not allow his own youth to have been attended by a single favourable circumstance, he brightened Mrs. Sparsit's juvenile career with every possible advantage, and showered wagon-loads of early roses all over that lady's path. (1.7.4)

We love the image of Bounderby in a toga, parading through the streets of Rome with Mrs. Sparsit pulled along behind him.

Quote #3

'we have never had any difficulty with you, and you have never been one of the unreasonable ones. You don't expect to be set up in a coach and six, and to be fed on turtle soup and venison, with a gold spoon, as a good many of 'em do!' Mr. Bounderby always represented this to be the sole, immediate, and direct object of any Hand who was not entirely satisfied (1.11.11)

Bounderby always imagines that the workers want to jump over middle-class status (his own status) right into the aristocracy.