"When a man marries his mistress it creates a job opportunity"
About this Quote
Goldsmith’s line has the slick efficiency of a deal memo: one marital status change, one vacancy created. The punch lands because it treats romance like labor markets, collapsing the grand moral theater of adultery into a simple piece of economic churn. That reduction is the intent. He’s not confessing, he’s reframing. If you can describe an affair and its fallout in the language of “job opportunity,” you’ve already won the argument on your own turf: the world of transactions, incentives, and consequences that can be priced.
The subtext is both cynical and self-protective. By turning the mistress into a “role” and the wife into a “position,” the line sidesteps guilt and outrage. Nobody gets hurt in a spreadsheet. The joke launders betrayal into pragmatism, letting the speaker sound worldly rather than cruel. It also contains a quiet brag: the man at the center is someone for whom relationships are plentiful enough to be managed like staffing. Desire becomes turnover.
Context matters because Goldsmith was a businessman and corporate raider, a figure associated with disruption dressed up as efficiency. In that light, the quip reads like a miniature manifesto of elite impunity: even scandal can be narrated as productivity. There’s a social commentary baked in too, whether he intended it or not. The “job opportunity” isn’t for the woman who lost security; it’s for the next mistress, the next applicant in a system where power creates demand. The line works because it’s funny in the way capitalism can be funny: brutally, cleanly, and at someone else’s expense.
The subtext is both cynical and self-protective. By turning the mistress into a “role” and the wife into a “position,” the line sidesteps guilt and outrage. Nobody gets hurt in a spreadsheet. The joke launders betrayal into pragmatism, letting the speaker sound worldly rather than cruel. It also contains a quiet brag: the man at the center is someone for whom relationships are plentiful enough to be managed like staffing. Desire becomes turnover.
Context matters because Goldsmith was a businessman and corporate raider, a figure associated with disruption dressed up as efficiency. In that light, the quip reads like a miniature manifesto of elite impunity: even scandal can be narrated as productivity. There’s a social commentary baked in too, whether he intended it or not. The “job opportunity” isn’t for the woman who lost security; it’s for the next mistress, the next applicant in a system where power creates demand. The line works because it’s funny in the way capitalism can be funny: brutally, cleanly, and at someone else’s expense.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
|---|
More Quotes by James
Add to List
