Meaning & Analysis
Someone who openly displays their money is inviting theft or loss, as if they actually desire to lose it.
Insights
Foolish Display
The proverb cautions against ostentation or imprudent openness with one's wealth, suggesting that such behavior inevitably attracts unwanted attention and loss.
Inviting Trouble
Implies that recklessness or carelessness (showing the purse) provides opportunities for others (such as thieves) to take advantage, making misfortune partly self-inflicted.
Responsibility for Consequences
Emphasizes the idea that some losses result from the owner's own lack of discretion, holding individuals accountable for exposing themselves to risk.
Historical and Social Context
In societies where personal security was tenuous, openly displaying valuables was an obvious hazard. The proverb’s recurrence in early modern English sources shows awareness of the risks associated with wealth and the social norms discouraging display.
Psychological Dimension
Speaks to the human tendency toward vanity or naivety, warning that pride or carelessness may bring about the very outcomes one fears, such as theft or exploitation.
Moral Lesson
Aligns with the wisdom of restraint, cautioning that one’s actions can be complicit in their own misfortunes—'Opportunity makes the thief'—and that prudence is a virtue.
Rhetorical Devices
Irony
Ironically attributes intention (wanting to be rid of the purse) to foolish behavior, sharpening the lesson through reversal.
Metonymy
'Purse' stands for all forms of wealth or valuables, making the proverb broadly applicable.
Direct Assertion
The plain, declarative style increases the force and memorability of the warning.
Transcription
Quotations
And keepe your beautie, within locks, and barres, here, Like a fooles treasure? —True, shee was a foole, When, first, shee shew'd it to a thiefe.
Who will not iudge him worthie to be rob'd, That sets his doores wide open to a thiefe, And shewes the fellon, where his treasure lies?
(He who).
He that shews his Purse, bribes the Thief.
He that sheweth his Wealth to a Thief, is the Cause of his own Pillage.
Cross References
Annotations
- The English say, Longs to be rid of it.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.