Of all the objects of hatred, a woman once loved is the most hateful.

The aphorism distills a cynical observation about emotional reversal: love, once intimate and idealizing, can curdle into a particularly intense form of resentment when it ends. The “most hateful” object is not a stranger or rival but someone who was once cherished—because the former lover carries knowledge of one’s vulnerabilities and because the breakup can feel like a betrayal of a shared past. In Beerbohm’s satiric vein, the line also skewers romantic self-dramatization: it implies that hatred here is less about the woman herself than about wounded pride, disappointed fantasy, and the discomfort of seeing one’s former devotion exposed as fallible.