Women say this sort of thing carelessly, with no wish to wound; but that makes it none the less hard to bear

'Oh, I am glad you have begun to take an interest in cricket. It is simply a social necessity in England. Why you ever made such a fuss about taking it up I can't think. You used to be so fond of watching baseball, and cricket is just the same thing.'

A close observer would have marked a deepening of the look of pain on Mr Crocker's face. Women say this sort of thing carelessly, with no wish to wound; but that makes it none the less hard to bear. 

P.G Wodehouse, Piccadilly Jim (1918), 39-40