The Importance of Being Earnest Quotes

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Outside the family circle, papa, I'm glad to say, is entirely unknown. I think that is quite as it should be. The home seems to me to be the proper sphere for the man.

The Importance of Being Earnest

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

The Importance of Being Earnest

It is always painful to part from people whom one has known for a brief space of time. The absence of old friends one can endure with equanimity, But even a momentary separation from anyone to whom one has just been introduced is almost unbearable.

The Importance of Being Earnest

I have never met any really wicked person before. I feel rather frightened. I am so afraid he will look just like every one else.

The Importance of Being Earnest

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

The Importance of Being Earnest

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 r...

The Importance of Being Earnest

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

The Importance of Being Earnest

They have been eating muffins. That looks like repentance.

The Importance of Being Earnest

You don't seem to realise, that in married life three is company and two is none.

The Importance of Being Earnest

Mary Farquhar, who always flirts with her own husband across the dinner-table. That is not very pleasant. Indeed, it is not even decent . . . and that sort of thing is enormously on the increase. The amount of women in London who flirt with their own...

The Importance of Being Earnest

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 That is exactly what things were originally made for.

The Importance of Being Earnest

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

The Importance of Being Earnest

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 pro...

The Importance of Being Earnest

Yes; poor Bunbury is a dreadful invalid. Well, I must say, Algernon, that I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shillyshallying with the question is absurd.

The Importance of Being Earnest

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.

The Importance of Being Earnest

Well, in the first place girls never marry the men they flirt with. Girls don't think it right.

The Importance of Being Earnest

JACK That is nonsense. If I marry a charming girl like Gwendolen, and she is the only girl I ever saw in my life that I would marry, I certainly won't want to know Bunbury. ALGERNON Then your wife will. You don't seem to realize, that in married life...

The Importance of Being Earnest

Why is it that at a bachelor's establishment the servants invariably drink the champagne? I ask merely for information. I attribute it to the superior quality of the wine, sir. I have often observed that in married households the champagne is rarely ...

The Importance of Being Earnest