HARLES LAMB was sitting next some chattering woman at dinner. Observing he didn't attend to her, "You don't seem," said the lady, "to be at all the better for what I have been saying to you." "No, ma'am," he answered, "but this gentleman on the other side of me must, for it all came in at one ear and went out at the other."
Thomas Moore, Diary.
ORTY times over let Michaelmas pass,
Grizzling hair the brain doth clear—
Then you know a boy is an ass,
Then you know the worth of a lass,
Once you have come to Forty Year.
W. M. Thackeray.
EN are not troubled to hear a man dispraised, because they know, though he be naught, there's worth in others. But women are mightily troubled to hear any one of them spoken against, as if the sex itself were guilty of some untrustworthiness.
Selden, Table Talk.