The Importance of Being Earnest Quotes

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

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.”
― Oscar Wilde, 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.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest: Authoritative Text, Backgrounds, Criticism

“If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“I never change, except in my affections.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“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.”
― Oscar Wilde, 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 romance is uncertainty. If ever I get married, I'll certainly try to forget the fact.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

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

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

“I could deny it if I liked. I could deny anything if I liked.”
― Oscar Wilde, 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 produces no effect whatsoever.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

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

“Oh! I don't think I would like to catch a sensible man. I shouldn't know what to talk to him about.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Indeed, no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“You have filled my tea with lumps of sugar, and though I asked most distinctly for bread and butter, you have given me cake. I am known for the gentleness of my disposition, and the extraordinary sweetness of my nature, but I warn you, Miss Cardew, you may go too far.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

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

“Jack. This ghastly state of things is what you call Bunburying, I suppose?
Algernon. Yes, and a perfectly wonderful Bunbury it is. The most wonderful Bunbury I have ever had in my life.
Jack. Well, you've no right whatsoever to Bunbury here.
Algernon. That is absurd. One has a right to Bunbury anywhere one chooses. Every serious Bunburyist knows that.”
― Oscar Wilde, 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.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“To be born, or at any rate bred, in a hand-bag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

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

“Well, I can't eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest