The Importance of Being Earnest Quotes

“you seem to be displaying signs of triviality.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“you seem to be displaying signs of triviality.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Lady Bracknell: Is this Miss Prism a female of repellent aspect, remotely connected with education?

Chasuble: (Somewhat indignantly) She is the most cultivated of ladies, and the very picture of respectability.

Lady Bracknell: It is obviously the same person.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“JACK.
I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can’t go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.

ALGERNON.
We have.

JACK.
I should extremely like to meet them. What do they talk about?

ALGERNON.
The fools? Oh! about the clever people, of course.

JACK.
What fools!”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“That certainly seems a satisfactory explanation, does it not?
– Yes dear, if you can believe him.
– I don't. But that does not affect the wonderful beauty of his answer.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“A veces podemos pasarnos años sin vivir en absoluto, y de pronto toda nuestra vida se concentra en un solo instante.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“They have been eating muffins. That looks like repentance.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Lady Bracknell, I hate to seem inquisitive, but would you kindly inform me who I am?”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Lady Bracknell: “He was eccentric, I admit. But only in later years. And that was the result of the Indian climate, and marriage, and indigestion, and other things of that kind.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“It is very vulgar to talk about one's business.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“When I see a spade I call it a spade.
I'm glad to say I have never seen a spade!”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“to marry into a cloakroom, and form an alliance with a parcel”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“My own one, I have never loved anyone in the world but you.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Jack: [Slowly and hesitatingly] “Gwendolen–Cecily–it is very painful for me to be forced to speak the truth. It is the first time in my life that I have ever been reduced to such a painful position, and I am really quite inexperienced in doing anything of the kind.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“You don't seem to realise, that in married life three is company and two is none.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Ah! That must be Aunt Augusta. Only relatives, or creditors, ever ring in that Wagnerian manner.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“I keep a diary in order to enter the wonderful secrets of my life. If I didn't write them down, I should not probably forget all about them.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“The General was essentially a man of peace, except in his domestic life.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“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.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out. Whatever influence I ever had over mamma, I lost at the age of three.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“I would merely beg you not to be too much bowed down by grief. What seem to us bitter trails are often blessings in disguise.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Lady Bracknell. Good afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well. Algernon. I’m feeling very well, Aunt Augusta. Lady Bracknell. That’s not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Really, if the lower orders don’t set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them? They seem, as a class, to have absolutely no sense of moral responsibility.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Do you really keep a diary? I'd give anything to look at it. May I?
CECILY: Oh no. [Puts her hand over it.] You see, it is simply a very young girl's record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication. When it appears in volume form I hope you will order a copy.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“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.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“In matters of great importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest