Quote Origin: Money Cannot Buy Health, But I’d Settle for a Diamond-Studded Wheelchair

Dorothy Parker? Evan Esar? Barry Day? Apocryphal?

Picture of six diamonds from Unsplash

Question for Quote Investigator: The notable wit Dorothy Parker suffered from ill-health in her later years. She has been credited with the following remark:

Money cannot buy health. but I’d settle for a diamond-studded wheelchair.

I have not been able to find any solid citations, and I have become skeptical. What do you think?

Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest match found by QI appeared in “The Liverpool Echo” of Merseyside, England in January 1959 within a column titled “Echoes and Gossip of the Day” which contained miscellaneous short items. A title appeared above the quotation. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1

Settling Up
Money can’t buy health. but I’d settle for a diamond-studded wheelchair. —Dorothy Parker.

Parker died in 1967; hence, this attribution occurred while she was still alive, but no source was specified.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

The notion that money cannot buy health has a long history. The 1676 edition of “The Compleat Angler” by Izaak Walton contained the following passage. The word “money” was spelled “mony”:2

… look to your health: and if you have it praise God, and value it next to a good Conscience; for, health is the second blessing that we Mortals are capable of: a blessing, that mony cannot buy, and therefore value it, and be thankful for it.

In January 1959 the quotation under examination appeared in “The Liverpool Echo” as mentioned previously. In February 1959 it appeared in the “Nantwich Guardian” of Cheshire, England. Parker received credit again; thus, the statement achieved further distribution.3

In 1968 quotation collector Evan Esar published “20,000 Quips and Quotes”, and Esar included the statement:4

Money cannot buy health, but I’d settle for a diamond-studded wheelchair. – Dorothy Parker

In 1974 music magazine “Circus” published a piece about the rock group “Brownsville Station”. According to the article, several group members said the following in unison:5

“I wanna eat money-pizza with silver dollar anchovies. I don’t give a damn if I get in a car wreck tomorrow and I’m paralyzed as long as I can go in a diamond-studded wheelchair.”

In 1977 “The Kansas City Times” printed an article titled “Quips and Quotables” which included the following item:6

Money cannot buy health, but I’d settle for a diamond-studded wheelchair.—Dorothy Parker.

In 1987 “The Portable Curmudgeon” compiled by Jon Winokur printed the quotation together with an ascription to Dorothy Parker.7

In 2004 Barry Day published “Dorothy Parker In Her Own Words” which contained the following passage. The ellipsis occurred in the book text:8

Why did she write? “Need of money, dear. I’d like to have money. And I’d like to be a good writer. Those two can come together and I hope they will, but if that’s too adorable, I’d rather have money. I hate almost all rich people, but I think I’d be darling at it.”

“Money can’t buy health, but I’d settle for a diamond-studded wheelchair. … The two most beautiful words in the English language are—’Check enclosed.'”

The quotations in the first paragraph above appeared in an interview with Parker published in “The Paris Review” in 1956.9 However, the quotations in the second paragraph did not occur in that interview, and Day’s book did not contain any supporting citations for those remarks.  A separate Quote Investigator article about the ‘Check enclosed’ quip is available here.

In 2007 the quotation collection “Women Know Everything!” compiled by Karen Weekes included the following:10

Money cannot buy health, but I’d settle for a diamond-studded wheelchair.
—DOROTHY PARKER (1893-1967) AMERICAN WRITER AND CRITIC

In conclusion, the two 1959 citations in English newspapers support the ascription to Dorothy Parker. Also, QI has encountered no plausible alternative attributions. Thus, this evidence is substantive. Yet, QI has not found the quotation directly within any of Parker’s writings or interviews. After the quotation appeared in Evan Esar’s 1968 collection “20,000 Quips and Quotes” it achieved wider circulation. QI believes the quotation should be tentatively credited to Dorothy Parker.

Image Notes: Picture of six diamonds from Edgar Soto at Unsplash. The image has been cropped and resized.

Acknowledgements: Great thanks to Ben Zimmer and his friend whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration. Zimmer found citations beginning in 1970. He also noted the occurrence in “Dorothy Parker In Her Own Words”.

  1. 1959 January 5, The Liverpool Echo, Echoes and Gossip of the Day – Settling Up, Quote Page 8, Column 6, Liverpool, Merseyside, England. (Newspapers.com also British Newspaper Archive) link ↩︎
  2. 1676, The Compleat Angler, Or The Contemplative Man’s Recreation by Izaak Walton, Fifth Edition much corrected and enlarged, Part 1, Chapter 21, Quote Page 268, Printed for Richard Marriott, London. (Internet Archive at archive.org) link ↩︎
  3. 1959 February 19, Nantwich Guardian, (Filler item), Quote Page 6, Column 4, Nantwich, Cheshire, England. (British Newspaper Archive) ↩︎
  4. 1968, 20,000 Quips and Quotes by Evan Esar, Subject: Health and Wealth, Quote Page 374, Doubleday, Garden City, New York. (Verified with hardcopy) ↩︎
  5. 1974 May, Circus, Volume 8, Issue 8, Brownsville Station: Punk Personified by Jonathan Singer, Start Page 26, Quote Page 26, Column 3, Circus Enterprises Corporation. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  6. 1977 January 25, The Kansas City Times, Quips and Quotables, Quote Page 26, Column 5, Kansas City, Missouri. (Newspapers_com) link ↩︎
  7. 1987, The Portable Curmudgeon, Compiled and edited by Jon Winokur, Topic: Money, Quote Page 198, New American Library, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  8. 2004, Dorothy Parker In Her Own Words, Edited by Barry Day, Chapter 9: Writer at Work, Quote Page 104, Taylor Trade Publishing: An Imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Lanham, Maryland. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  9. 1956 Summer, The Paris Review, Volume 4, Number 13, The Art of Fiction XIII, Interview with Dorothy Parker, Start Page 72, Quote Page 79 and 85, The Paris Review Inc., Paris, France. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  10. 2007 Copyright, Women Know Everything!: 3,241 Quips, Quotes & Brilliant Remarks, Compiled by Karen Weekes, Section: Health, Quote Page 204, Quirk Books, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Verified with scans) ↩︎