— David Copperfield (1850), Chapter 12
About this quote
हिन्दी में
सालाना आमदनी बीस पाउंड, सालाना खर्च उन्नीस पाउंड उन्नीस शिलिंग छह पेंस — नतीजा, सुख।
What it means
The margin here is sixpence: half a shilling against twenty pounds, well under one percent. Micawber’s claim is that happiness turns on the sign of the difference and not its size, which is why the two numbers are set so close together.
It is worth keeping because it names a threshold rather than a virtue. Nothing in the formula says earn more, and a larger income buys nothing if expenditure climbs with it. Read plainly it is a piece of cold arithmetic delivered in a warm voice.
What it teaches you
Check the sign before the size. A raise that arrives with a matching rise in spending leaves you exactly where the sixpence leaves Micawber — and if you want the rule to be usable rather than quotable, the gap has to be wide enough to absorb one bad month, which sixpence plainly is not.
अर्थ और सीख
बीस पाउंड कमाई और उन्नीस पाउंड उन्नीस शिलिंग छह पेंस खर्च — यानी बचत सिर्फ़ छह पेंस, और नतीजा सुख। बात रक़म की नहीं, फ़र्क़ के चिह्न की है: वही बीस पाउंड ज़रा-सा ज़्यादा खर्च हो जाएँ तो हालत उलट जाती है। इसलिए आमदनी बढ़ाने से पहले देखिए कि महीने के अंत में फ़र्क़ बचत में है या उधार में — और यह भी कि वह फ़र्क़ एक बुरे महीने को झेल सकता है या नहीं।
Where it comes from
Mr Micawber’s formula, delivered with total confidence by a man who has never once managed to apply it. The second half of the speech — twenty pounds spent against twenty pounds earned, ‘result misery’ — is the part that makes it a joke rather than advice.
Dickens based Micawber partly on his own father, whose debts put him in Marshalsea prison. The comedy has a bill attached to it.
