In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily.

The epigram turns on a social paradox: to avoid the reputation of being a “flirt” (someone who toys with desire without commitment), the woman “yielded easily,” implying she avoided teasing by consenting quickly. The wit exposes how reputations can be shaped less by moral reality than by labels and expectations—suggesting that a woman might be pressured into compliance to escape a different kind of stigma. Attributed to Talleyrand, it also reflects the cynical, salon-bred observation often associated with his conversational style: society’s judgments can incentivize behavior that is no more virtuous, merely differently interpreted.