The Importance of Being Earnest

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”

“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his.”

“To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”

“The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.”

“If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.”

“I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.”

“How you can sit there, calmly eating muffins when we are in this horrible trouble, I can’t make out. You seem to me to be perfectly heartless.""Well, I can’t eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them.""I say it’s perfectly heartless your eating muffins at all, under the circumstances.”

“I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.”

“I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty. If ever I get married, I'll certainly try to forget the fact.”

“In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.”

“I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays.”

“To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.”

“I never change, except in my affections.”

“Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.”

“I'll bet you anything you like that half an hour after they have met, they will be calling each other sister.Women only do that when they have called each other a lot of other things first.”

“I could deny it if I liked. I could deny anything if I liked.”

“What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise”

“Oh! I don't think I would like to catch a sensible man. I shouldn't know what to talk to him about.”

“Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.”

“I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever.”

“Good heavens, I suppose a man may eat his own muffins in his own garden.""But you have just said it was perfectly heartless to eat muffins!""I said it was perfectly heartless of YOU under the circumstances. That is a very different thing.""That may be, but the muffins are the same!”

“I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much”

“Indeed, no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.”

“I hope, Cecily, I shall not offend you if I state quite frankly and openly that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection.”

“My dear fellow, the truth isn’t quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl. What extraordinary ideas you have about the way to behave to a woman!”

“Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth. Can you forgive me?”

“Well I won't argue about the matter. You always want to argue about things.That is exactly what things were originally made for.”

“Never met such a Gorgon . . . I don't really know what a Gorgon is like, but I am quite sure that Lady Bracknell is one. In any case, she is a monster, without being a myth, which is rather unfair.”

“ever since I met you I have admired you more than any girl...I have ever met since...I met you.”