Daily Inspiration Quote by Mae West

Mae West lands this line like a wink sharpened into a weapon: a flirtation that doubles as a diagnosis. On the surface, it reads as a playful exit line - she’s teasing a “man with ideals” and ducking out before he loses them. Underneath, it’s a compact theory of how desire, hypocrisy, and self-image collide. She’s not admiring his ideals so much as putting a price tag on them.

The grammar does the dirty work. “I see you’re a man with ideals” isn’t praise; it’s a quick scan, like she’s clocking a trait the way you’d notice an expensive watch. Then comes the twist: “before you’ve still got them.” The phrasing is deliberately off-kilter, a little crooked in the mouth, implying that ideals aren’t stable possessions but temporary props people set down the moment temptation offers a better script. West’s persona - sexually frank, commercially savvy, always half a step ahead of the censors - depends on this kind of inversion: the “good man” isn’t safe, he’s simply untested.

In context, it’s also a jab at the era’s moral theater. West worked in a culture that demanded public purity while gorging on innuendo. By treating “ideals” as something fragile and faintly ridiculous, she punctures the pretense without sounding bitter. The line doesn’t beg for respectability; it predicts its collapse, then sashays away before the audience can pretend they didn’t want that collapse too.